I PICKED a theme encoded in the sequence of your three editorials of March 5. That theme can be deciphered easily if one particular sentence from each editorial is joined by 'because'. I hereby re-write that by taking the opening sentences of the first and the second editorials and last lines of the first column of the third editorial. That goes as “it may appear that we really don't have a solution to our problems” because “living in a state of denial is fast becoming a Pakistani speciality” because “the strategy of dangling the carrot is being tried in the judiciary as well”.

Indeed, the present intake of political affiliates into the higher judiciary as judges, which you referred to in the third editorial, would prove to be the most absurd mockery of independence of the judiciary. Where are we headed? No country can even survive without an independent and non - partisan judiciary. The rule of law, which is the identification mark of modern civilization, flows only from independence of the judiciary by leaving no one immune to justice. Otherwise, the mighty would be devouring the weak a la the mediaeval and ancient ages.

History is witness to the fact that empires and nations flourish with justice and vanish with injustice. The rise and fall of the Byzantines, the Saracens and the Mughals meticulously followed this law of Nature. The USSR, too, couldn't live anymore despite nuclear stockpiles because its bureaucracy and its CPSU were considered immune to the justice system prevailing there.

Why does every foreign - brand intellectual label us as a failed state? It's time for catharsis. We, a nation of 165 million souls, are gifted with all divine bounties and yet we are nationally crippled for want of an independent judiciary. It is we and nowhere else that each overthrowing of elected governments, one after the other, is legitimatised by none but the judiciary.

Nowhere else in the world an in - office prime minister was booked as hijacker and then convicted also by an anti - terrorism court. Nowhere else in the world such chimerical creatures as PCO judges and jiyala judges are heard of. And also nowhere else is a nationally charismatic leader ousted from electoral process by the judiciary at the behest of some extraneous powers.

By such macabre feats, a vacuum of authority pertaining to enforcement of writ of the state (or the rule of law) has been created in this country. Militancy is the response of society to fill that vacuum. Let us not be dull-heads by calling them just non - state actors.

With such a scenario, one finds nothing to be optimistic. Nevertheless, after travelling in pitch dark for almost six decades, we saw the first - ever ray of hope on March 9, 2007. Sudden transformation of that solitary but titanic 'no' into the ongoing mass movement on national scale for restoration of the rule of law clearly alludes to proximity of the much - awaited dawn. The Constitution Avenue is about to become the venue of that dawn.

MUHAMMAD WAQAR ASLAM
Quetta

(II)

IT is proposed that a draft bill containing Constitutional Amendment be tabled/presented before the National Assembly to resolve the present political crisis and normalise the current situation. The constitutional amendment can be moved by the PPP parliamentarian(s).

That by virtue of the proposed constitutional amendment, Article 63 - B will be inserted in the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973, which is as follows

“Article 63 - B The disqualification(s) as provided under Article 63(1)(h) of the Constitution, for the sentenced person(s)/candidate(s) will not apply to any person(s)/candidate(s), if the person(s)/candidate(s) have been pardoned by the President of Pakistan under Article 45 of the Constitution, 1973.”

SAALIM SALAM ANSARI
Karachi

(III)

DEAR politicians and lawyers, just at this moment stop all your activities and unite to get Pakistan out of the quicksand that it is rapidly sinking in.

Once we are out and rid of all the elements which are working to eliminate our country, you can go back to your horse-trading, dharnas, reinstatements, lotaism, back-biting, mudslinging and what not.

Just this time think and act like a Pakistani.

DR SAMIA KHAN
Karachi