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Who Does the Law Serve? Power, Representation and Inequality in Pakistan

Who Does the Law Serve? Power, Representation and Inequality in Pakistan

‘نیا قانون، نیا قانون کیا بک رہے ہو؟ قانون وہی ہے پرانا’-

‘What new law are you going on about? Law remains the same, old’.

-Saadat Hassan Manto (‘Naya Qanoon’)

Laws were once created to restrain those of the jungle. They were supposed to prevent an accumulation of resources with whoever was deemed fittest, until law itself became a resource the wealthiest and most powerful could hoard and abuse, by conquering nations and ruling over them. Our part of the world, too, has seen its fair share of invaders and colonisers, however, the dawn of democracy and constitutional law, promised a clean break; a system of government where power was not owned by the mightiest, only borrowed from the people, to represent and manifest their will. Years later the question still arises: if political power is formally given to the people but unequally distributed in practice, can the law avoid reproducing the very hierarchies of power it was supposed to dismantle?

Today, laws are made by a country’s legislature. In Pakistan that means a bi-cameral system where democratic representatives of citizens, first in the National Assembly and then in the Senate, debate, propose changes to and vote for or against a bill once it has been put forward by a member of the government. This democratic representation, and citizens’ confidence in it, is what gives these laws their relevance and efficacy; and it is what separates a democratic republic from what we now recognise as an authoritarian state.

However, hierarchies of power, based on economic class or social identities, do not need a formal authoritarian structure to manifest. They inevitably form when certain segments of society are denied adequate representation in the law-making process, either explicitly or implicitly, by failing to accommodate prevailing social inequities. Historically in Pakistan, positions of power in law making structures have been the subject of absurd controversies, from ‘Can a woman be head of state?’ to ‘Can we have non-Muslim judges in courts of law?’ In theory, and scarce practice, such biases have been rejected, with Benazir Bhutto becoming Prime Minister, and the Supreme Court of Pakistan remarking in 2007 that the constitution does not bar non-Muslim judges from serving as Chief Justice[1].

Unfortunately, representation loses its meaning and impact when it is merely theoretical, inconsistent, or scarce. Against a backdrop where such absurd questions........

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