PAT chief for lawyers’ role in democracy

LAHORE: Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) has set up a lawyers body namely Pakistan Awami Lawyers Movement (PALM).

Addressing the first meeting of PAT’s sister organisation PALM, PAT chairman Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri said patriotic and conscious lawyers must play an effective legal and political role in restoration of true democracy in the country.

He said the lawyer community will have to play a decisive role in ensuring speedy and inexpensive justice, supremacy of Constitution, the rule of law, and to check shenanigans of bureaucracy as well as corrupt elite.

He said honest bureaucrats and politicians were standing with the lawyers for bringing revolutionary reforms and secure future of the country. PAT will speed up struggle for electoral reforms and against shabby system with active assistance of legal fraternity. He said PAT was the only solid voice for the reforms in the prevalent corrupt electoral system and our consistent struggle in this regard was on the record. He said Pakistan was founded by a lawyer, now lawyers will secure its future. Corrupt elements should have been behind the bars but they became leaders at gunpoint as well as with the use of ill-gotten money. He said current shabby system has erased distinction between a leader and a bandit. He said Chief Justice of Pakistan had promised Bisma, daughter of a female martyr of Model Town shootings, that case would be heard on daily basis and had directed the Lahore High Court Bench to dispose of appeals relating to the case within 15 days. He expressed the hope that justice would be done. He said elections without reforms and accountability would produce same results which we have been witnessing for last many decades.