Pakistani Attorneys Targets of Musharraf Dictatorship

MD Daily Record (from AP), November 9, 2007:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Thousands of black-suited lawyers facing police batons and tear gas to protest the declaration of emergency rule have become Pakistan’s political conscience.

...

The general’s botched attempt to oust Pakistan’s top judge this spring sparked a mass movement against military rule, with lawyers in the vanguard. That put wind in the sails of a defiant Supreme Court, which challenged Musharraf’s dominance and the secret workings of Pakistan’s spy agencies.

Fearing the court would declare his recent presidential election victory illegal, Musharraf finally pulled the plug on its activism on Saturday by suspending the constitution and purging its ranks. Deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, now under house arrest, has urged lawyers to revolt.

It is tempting, especially for an American raised on goofball "hero revolts against the system and emerges victorious" cotton candy movies, to cast Pakistani lawyers as some sort of Solidarity-esque counter-tyrannical force. In individual cases, perhaps some are worthy of the comparison to Lech Wałęsa. But the public esteem of both judges and attorneys in Pakistani is quite low, due to widespread perceptions of cravenness and corruption.

Yet perhaps it is even more important that flawed men and women in a flawed Pakistani system stand up, however imperfectly, for justice and the rule of law? After all, is there any method to demand justice other than for flawed men and women in flawed systems to do so imperfectly, in Poland, the U.S. or Pakistan, or anywhere else?