TO REPEAT, and repeat — probably to the extent of boredom for many readers: that man of great perception, founder and maker of this nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had it perfectly right when he told his future legislators on Aug 11, 1947, four days before they were to be liberated, that the first duty of a government, of any government, was the imposition of law and order. The first duty — that is what he said.

I happen to be a member of that miniscule minority who are allowed to be vocal, but who go unheard and unheeded when they harp on and on that without the imposition and maintenance of law and order this country cannot progress — or even ultimately survive.

Why is it that this nation of 170 million cannot produce some 250 men and women to preside over the high benches of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and its four high courts who can think alike and who can stand as one body to dispense justice to the best of their ability and according to their collective conscience?

Must we have men who remember when approaching their age of retirement that their fathers declared their date of birth wrongly? Must we have others influenced by the likes of Rafiq Tarar? Why can we not have persons who can hold together and refuse as one sole body to swear varying oaths which vitiate their beliefs and integrity?

Why do our former judges (in their insecurity?) insist on being addressed as Mr Justice Retired so and so? That good judge Wajihuddin Ahmed, one of our presidential candidates, is referred to as Justice (Retired). Why can he just not be called Mr Wajihuddin Ahmed, and if he insists, he may be described each time his name is mentioned as ‘a former judge of the Supreme Court’?

Ironically, we must celebrate the fact that President General Pervez Musharraf and the serving generals who were with him on March 9, 2007, disgraced their army uniforms when they threatened and maltreated the Chief Justice of their country, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. The legal fraternity arose, many of the people with them, the brethren of the Bench held firm, together, and the presidential action was condemned and lawfully nullified.

We must also rejoice that the president chose to step back, though rather late in the day, but that he heeded the old adage that ‘good generals know when to retreat’.

Moving on to the storm raised by the presidential elections, we have had during the past week the usual ham-handed crackdown with people being arrested and jailed (round up the usual suspects?) for voicing their dissent. The media refers to those rounded up as ‘political activists’, ‘party workers’. However, they are also ordinary citizens of this country, like you or me, who are exercising their right to protest. The detention situation was correctly dealt with by Chief Justice Chaudhry who once again took suo motu action and ordered their immediate release. The administration complied.

This is progress. Our judiciary is making haste slowly. It is not so easy for the government to now pick up people, and tuck them away for indefinite periods.

The random picking up of dissenters was rife 30 years ago in the days of that great ‘democrat’, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, when the courts were truly helpless and the judges completely curbed and controlled. Zulfikar had the knack of having those, particularly his friends, who made remarks about him which he did not care for picked up by his police, jailed, and left to rot until he remembered them and relented.

One such ‘friend’ was I who, after saying I do not know what, was arrested in 1976, without being charged, and housed in Central Prison Karachi. There I ran into the bearded Syed Saeed Hassan and asked him what he was doing there — he hadn’t a clue, as he also had not been charged, and asked me the same question to which I gave the same answer.

The next man I met was that good old former policeman, Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, father of the now ‘great leader’ the Chaudhry of Gujrat, Lord of the Q League. I asked him why he was in Karachi and in prison. Bhai, he answered, I was jailed in Lahore. Yesterday, the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court asked my jailer to produce me in court today. So they bundled me into a small Suzuki, drove hell for leather towards Karachi, stopping only to allow me to empty my bladder. So here I am in Karachi so that the jailor in Lahore can swear in court that I am not his prisoner.

I suggested to him that I ask my lawyer to file a habeas corpus petition for him in Karachi. At this he threw up his hands. Nahi bhai, then they will take me to Mach jail. Those were the days, my friends, we thought they’d never end…

On Friday, September 28, the Bench headed by Rana Bhagwandas ruled as it did. One silly man, prior to the verdict, a lawyer, predicted that the judges would ‘throw the uniform into the nearest gutter’. One other silly man after the verdict had been pronounced, another lawyer, disgusted with the order handed down, threatened that he and his legal fraternity would raid the offices of the Election Commission on September 29, the day of the scrutiny of the presidential nomination papers, and rip to pieces those filed by General Musharraf.

The government could do no other than take the necessary precautions. But as usual, as I write, they are overreacting. We must just hope that no one is killed. Many people have been injured — that is bad enough.

We are unfortunate in that 170 million people cannot produce a competent and good leader. Uneducated as the majority remain (the percentage of the illiterate rise by the day with the spiralling birth rate) we can only vote for the best of the worst lot. Such is our fate.

Tired as we are of all these men and women who have come and gone, are still with us, or are scrapping to get back, should we not despair? Or do we just continue, on and on and on, mumbling to ourselves, ‘nil desperandum’?