Defance Day

Justice System in Pakistan

Justice through the Court Of Law and through the Jirga
For the system of justice in Pakistan, “Jirga” and “Court of Law” are two widely used and known options available to the people. The citizens consider opting between the two in order to pledge justice on the basis of the system’s effectiveness and fairness. Effectiveness, here, includes duration, financial resources needed, accessibility to the people, and the ease of re-appealing against unjust decisions. Whereas, fairness encompasses uniformity in constitutional laws and corruption.
Jirga provides an inexpensive and straight forward system of justice as compared to court of law. In jirga, elder members of the community come forward voluntarily to resolve the issues of the conflicted parties bearing all the costs themselves, in order to gain blessings of God. Victims do not have to incur any cost in order to refer their case to jirga “as each individual knows his or her rights and duties under a fully autonomous environment where the individuals have a right to identify and define their respective rights and still maintain a good system of social security” (Gohar and Yousufzai in Restorative Justice, Jirga and Local Government Institutions in Pakistan). While if people want to attain justice through court of law they have to incur a considerable amount of cost in terms of hiring lawyers who could defy their case in court.
In Jirga the problems are addressed by scrutinizing the facts of the dispute, examining the witnesses, following a thorough discussion with the parties and coming up with an adequate solution. Justice through jirga is a speedy process in contrast to court of law; as cases are resolved in few days only whereas, justice through court systems incorporates a lengthier process. Firstly, F.I.R needs to be registered at the police station. Then, the police officials investigate upon the registered F.I.R and file a charge sheet with the court so that the hearing process could start .The process in itself creates tremendous time lapses as it has to go through various stages of completion and demands a lot of patience from both the parties seeking justice. Because of this time-consuming process “over 2.5 million cases are pending in the courts at present” as admitted by the Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Moreover, accessibility to these justice systems along with the right to re appeal against unjust decisions is also significant in determining their effectiveness. Jirga system is found in the tribal areas of N.W.F.P and Baluchistan, practiced by the Pakhtoon tribes, hence, merely accessible to Pathans only. On the other hand, there is a supreme court in Pakistan, a high court in each province and session courts all over the country. The court of law is accessible to every individual disregarding the ethnicity and location one associates to. In regard to re appeal, in jirga both the parties have to abide by the decisions of jirga leaders. If one of them thinks that jirga has not done justice to them they usually cannot re appeal for the reconsideration of their case and have to abide by the original decision made by the jirga members. While in court of law according to constitution one could file petition for the re opening of his or her case if he or she could prove that the original decision was unjust.
Aristotle defined fairness as a principle that "equals should be treated equally and unequal’s unequally”. Since all humans are equal in the eyes of the law, so this implies that they have a birth right to be judged fairly. Fairness and justice have always been associated very closely as the term justice could not stand without fairness. Fairness amongst these two different justice systems could be judged on the foundations of uniformity of the declarations made for all and the impartiality while making declarations. “Jirga receives criticism for its informal nature, an informality that provides formal structure for those living under it. The laws and procedural rules of a Jirga are un-codified, unstructured, and loose enough to be easily understood and uniformly practiced by the people. Written records of Jirga do not generally exist” (Gohar and Yousufzai, 39). Per contra, court of law in Pakistan follows the Constitution of 1973 which is a well regulated, structured, elaborated and codified. These features of the constitution of the court of law make it fair and uniform so that justice is done universally on equivalent basis in all courts.
Corruption and biasness exist almost equally in both the justice systems. Accusations of being biased and taking bribe from the wealthy have been heard frequently about the jirga members. Jirga members who are accused of being corrupt because of their partiality and accepting bribes are immediately exposed before the community, putting a permanent dent on their character and their ability to lead the community any further (Gohar and Yousufzai 25). Moreover, corruption, bribery and biasness also prevail in the court systems as evidences and witnesses are altered according to one’s needs.
Hence, it can be concluded that both jirga system and court system are effective in their respective manners where jirga system has the pros of being speedy and inexpensive while court system has the advantage in terms of accessibility and right to re appeal against unjust decisions. But no matter how strong fairness is a component of justice, none of the two forms of justice system could be acknowledged as fair or ranked on the scale of fairness. However, what is important to note here is the fact that for deliverance of justice in Pakistan there is a dire need to utilize and capitalize on both forms of justice system where one should complement the other. The need of the hour is to institutionalize fairness, equality and effectiveness of justice and for that purpose both the forms of justice system should be made corruption and pressure free.

Pakistan’s Champion Trophy’s squad announced - Younis Khan dropped

Pakistan cricket team’s 30 man initial squad for the forthcoming ICC Champion’s Trophy has been announced and the star middle order batsman Younis Khan, who has been out of form for quite a while now, has been dropped from the squad.
The selection committee which announced the preliminary squad was headed by former Test cricketer Iqbal Qasim, who along with his team were on the task of observing and handpicking upcoming cricketers from the performances depicted in the Super-Eight Twenty20 in Lahore. Younis’s selection was already hanging in balance since his recent performances were floppy enough to make him stand in the danger area. And now the doubts have been confirmed as he failed to get selected for the Champion’s Trophy League. Younis has been in poor form not just in the test series but also in the 50-over format which was confirmed by his failure to mark his presence in the recent series against South Africa.
The 35-year-old Younis managed to score just a total of 116 runs in the series against South Africa earlier this month which Pakistan lost shamefully. The track record of Younis shows that the middle-order batsman has not been in form for years now as he has not managed to score a century since November 2008. Since his debut 13 years ago, he has so far scored 7014 runs in 253 one-day internationals.
Chief selector Iqbal Qasim said the Pakistani squad was a “mix of youth and experience”.
“Younis’s name was not considered after he did not show the form in the last few matches,” he told AFP
The former captain, who already retired from the Twenty20 version, was considering retiring from ODIs as well, as reported by media. However, a selector said that Younus must not lose heart. “To retire or not will be his own decision. If Younus feels he is still good enough, he can make a comeback by showing his form in domestic competitions.”
The decision to drop Younis Khan, he said, was made after reaching consensus with the team management including coach Dav Whatmore and captain Misbahul Haq.
The other batsman who failed to make his impression on the selectors was the all-rounder Abdul Razzaq who has not played a one-day international since November 2011.
A selector commented that “we are unaware of Razzaq’s fitness since he has not taken part in domestic tournaments.”
While cutting out Younis and overlooking Razzaq, however, all the other senior players including Kamran Akmal, Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik and Umar Gul were retained in the squad.
Pakistan is in group B of the ICC Champion’s Trophy event which is to be held in England from June 3rd to June 23rd, 2013. Group B also includes arch-rival India, along with the West Indies and South Africa. Pakistan is to play their first match against West Indies on June 7 after which it will play South Africa on June 10 and India on June 15.
In Group A are Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and England.
Pakistan’s probables for the squad include Azhar Ali, Asad Ali, Anwar Ali, Imran Farhat, Ahmed Shehzad Nasir Jamshed, Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Hafeez, Misbah ul Haq, Harris Sohail, Asad Shafiq, Umar Akmal, Shoaib Malik, Shahid Afridi, Umar Amin, Sohail Tanvir, Hammad Azam, Junaid Khan, Mohammad Irfan, Wahab Riaz, Umar Gul, Rahat Ali, Ehsan Adil, Imran Khan, Aizaz Cheema, Mohammad Rizwan, Saeed Ajmal, Abdul Rehman, Yasir Arafat and Zulfiqar Babar.

Man and Humanity in Search of Peace and New Future

“The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions.”
(Robert Briffault. The Making of Humanity, London, 1918)
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.(Alexander Pope “An Essay on Man”)
The mankind stands at its most tormenting crossroads – a time fraught with insane tragedies, man seeing man as a wild beast to be haunted and sadistic leaders and decadent superpowers forging bogus wars, planned massacres and environmental disasters all in a knowledge-driven, information age global culture of citizenry participation and political activism wanting to co-exist in peace and harmony within the encompassed and Living Universe. Throughout history men of power and influence commit horrible crimes against the humanity of which they are an essential part. Why? The answer rests with their individualistic absolutism and mindset. Is it part of the human nature that man should be cruel to man? The primitive scope is now enlarged to encompass crimes against all the living things, the universe and whatever it contains. We are at a RISK of Extinction. Global warriors are the elite class born to rule – the men of king, who are most often hated and feared and always dream of glory and triumph to achieve at a cost of ruthlessness, triviality and success leading to degeneration and viciousness across the human societies. They are influential to defy accountability for their crimes. George Bush and Tony Blair both despite being indicted by an International Tribunal for crimes against the humanity in Iraq are free and untouchable. Greg Felton (“1936 and the illusion of progress — Part I”: Mediamonitors.net: 3/31/2011) takes us to an historical insight – the aggression by a fascist regime against a helpless neighbor – a viewpoint very much intact in the contemporary global peace and security context:
“The lessons of history are lost because we are careful to compartmentalize them to the time they happened and treat them as museum pieces. Our governing myths of progress and the perfectibility of man instill in us the conceit that whatever happened “back then” could not have any meaning today because we know so much more and the world is so much different……..The criminals and victims may have changed in 75 years, but the polite rationalizations we offer up to appease international crime today are pretty much the same.”
Recently, a global Think-Tank gathering at Davos, Switzerland showed the organizing muscles of affluent bankers, politicians and billionaires and some ruling elite taken from the painful tragedies of the poor and left-over human beings in other parts of the world. It is unknown who invites who and what criterion is implied to select the rich and 1% affluent ruling elite under questioning in functional Western democracies. They have no legitimacy from the democratic masses to talk about their future. Does this mean only rich and most powerful entities are presumed intelligent and capable of change and future-making? This is naive historical thinking lingering on to this day. If so, it will undermine Reason and defy the logic of moral and intellectual advancements up to the 21st century. Bankers and few ruling elite are part of the problems, not solutions. Bankers would be obliged to save the banks, not the humanity as appears to be the case of Cyprus financial bankruptcy under the EU 10 billion Euro emergency loan. Bankers will deprive the common Cypriot folks of their lifelong savings and assets to impose the EU dictates. To them mankind is just numbers and digits and the same is viewed by the warmongers. Time and history have articulated new paradigms of change and future-making. Nobody is sure, how to imagine the future except some assumptions of the few affluent whose business will be at stake if future turns out to be problematic and uncertain. Charles A Kupchan (“From the American Century to the Competition Century- Problem of Grand Strategy” ISN- International Security Network: