IK is not going anywhere; he is known to fight till the last ball. A brutal crackdown is currently underway to silence the voices of dissent. The judiciary has decided to play its role as mandated by the ignored constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan so painfully crafted by the genuine representatives of the people elected through the only free and fair election of 1970.
In the decade of the sixties, the Awami League was blamed for the famous Agartala Conspiracy which ultimately led to the civil war in the Eastern Wing (Now Bangladesh). A tribunal was set up in Dhaka Cantonment headed by Justice S.A. Rehman a retired Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) with Justices M.R. Khan and Maksum-ul-Hakim as its members. During the trial, the workers of the Awami League surrounded the venue. Justice Rehman had to flee in his night suit. When he arrived at the safety of his Gulberg residence, he was clear that a political solution was the only way forward. The former Naval Chief and the serving Governor Admiral (R) S. M. Ahsan and the brilliant soldier and intellectual Lt. Gen. Sahibzada Yaqoob Ali Khan the field commander pleaded for a negotiated settlement after the overwhelming majority of the Awami League in the elections that followed. Instead the President General Agha Muhammad Khan opted for military action, the rest is history. Jinnah’s Pakistan was dismembered and Bangladesh appeared on the world map.
Imran Khan, with the overwhelming support of the youth population, seeks a sovereign Pakistan as envisioned by Iqbal and Jinnah not subservient as attempted by the only Field Marshal (FM) ever produced in the land of the pure. It is indeed interesting when his self-awarded rank was challenged in the Lahore High Court (LHC) during the 1965 electoral contest in which he was a candidate against Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah the Madre Millat, he voluntarily withdrew the same to be restored after the election that he manipulated to win. Madre Millat was declared a traitor and Indian agent by his stalwarts.
In 1965, Madre Millat demanded the restoration of the unanimously agreed constitution of 1956 to save the union while the FM wanted to rule by his imposed 1962 version. A constitution is an agreement between the people and the state that they create to serve them. An agreement is only valid if it is enacted with the free will of the parties which the 1962 document was not hence it went down the drain with the ouster of the first usurper. Today the people of Pakistan are forced to defend their constitution to save what remains of Jinnah’s Pakistan. In 1958 when the unanimously agreed constitution was abrogated only the people of the Eastern Wing protested while we were misled by the looks and guile of the usurper. As a result, the union was irreversibly fractured. In the year 2023, while the Golden Jubilee of the 1973 version is being celebrated, it is being trampled by blatant excesses of the state apparatus. Defence of the constitution and the rule of law it ensures has become an uphill struggle. Hopefully, the superior judiciary will perform its function and ensure complete subservience to its laid down clauses including the enshrined fundamental human rights. All pre-1973 laws like the 1864 Sedition Act, 1923 Official Secrecy Act, 1935 Government of India Act, MPO, 1952 Army Act, etc should be declared invalid if they violate the legislated document.
In the past, those who resisted were cornered and removed. Liaquat Ali Khan refused to surrender and so did Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In Iran, the elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mosaddeq was also not spared when he stood up for his nation’s interests. The Shah had to face a people’s revolution. After him, the Islamic Republic of Iran has emerged as a sovereign nation that refuses to take dictation. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a constitutional democracy refuses to surrender its sovereignty, through civilian supremacy it will stand tall in the comity of nations. Haqiqi Azadi (Real Freedom) is now unstoppable.