On Bias

This article was written over a decade ago, during the Benazir Bhutto’s appeal against her conviction by an Accountability Court.  Then, the Court convicting her was accused of bias.  I wrote this article - part of a series of columns for TFT on the miscellany of law - reflecting on some aspects of bias.

Recently, the Supreme Court has been criticised for being biased again.

The Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto is launching another attempt to enter Pakistan triumphantly, bringing allegations of bias against the judiciary with her.  Her lawyers who, at this moment, are prevaricating and delaying in our august Supreme Court, seek to introduce into evidence, amongst other things, alleged phone conversations recorded by (what our press likes to call) the ‘sensitive’ agencies.

Sensitive or not, these intelligence agencies seem to have tapped the phones of the judges hearing Ms. Bhutto’s case in 1999.  More interesting is the alleged phone conversation between the then Law Minister, Khalid Anwar, and the High Court Judge Malik Mohammad Qayoom.  Less interesting is Khalid Anwar’s tepid defense of his actions (published in the daily DAWN).

One of the rules of ‘Natural Justice’ is that everyone is entitled to be heard by a judge who is not biased or prejudiced in a way that precludes a fair and genuine trial.  This rule of Natural Justice was first set out by Lord Hewart CJ in what is now a familiar phrase: “Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done” (R v. Sussex JJ., ex parte McCarthy [1924] 1 KB 256).  Of course, judges are only human, and it impossible to expect from them “the icy impartiality of a Rhadamanthus”, the cruel judge of Hell, who punished before he heard (cited by Bowen LJ in Jackson v. Barry Ry. [1893] 1 Ch 238).  Evidently, even Satan is unfamiliar with that other rule of Natural Justice, the audi alterem partem principle that no one should be condemned unheard.  But I digress.  Judges are not supermen, an astute observation made by our Supreme Court (for more on that particular farce, read Justice Akhlaq Hussain’s case PLD 1969 SC 201).  They are men, and hence liable to their individual temper, constitution and passion; which is why if and when these three emotions are exercised, a litigant is entitled to a new, unbiased trail.

The tests for bias are settled principles of law, but their development has thrown up the odd case or two of some interest. 

Take, for example, R. (Donoghue) v. Cork County JJ. ([1910] 2 IR 271) where the conviction by an Irish magistrate – and it is important to remember the Magistrate was Irish – of a certain defendant was quashed when it was shown that “a very bad feeling” existed between him and the defendant’s family.  DeSmith’s does not elaborate on the case, and reveals only that the animosity was the result of “a trespass by a fowl.”  Ghar ki murghi = conviction, I suppose.

The natural right of every litigant to have a fair trial is so fundamental to the practice of the law that even the most absurd allegations of bias have been adjudicated upon.  In R v. Dublin JJ. ([1904] 2 IR 75), the owners of a public house whose liquor license had not been granted by the licensing judge (in England, establishments that serve liquor must have permission to do so) brought a case of bias against him on the grounds that he was a teetotaler.  Their argument was that the licensing judge’s state of mind was “likely to prevent him from dealing fairly with applications before him”.  The challenge, however, was unsuccessful.

Of course, the act of trying to bias a judge is a different story altogether.  An Indian case, reported as 45 Cr LJ 244 (RC) is quite succinct on the issue: Here, interference by a minister in a trial case was proved.   It was decided that the case was to be retried because of this alleged interference, even though it had not been proved whether or not it had been a cause of the verdict.  Of course, all this case puts Mr. Khalid Anwar’s rather tepid defense of his action in serious doubt, regardless of what Ardeshir Cowasjee or Amina Jilani may say.  

For the prosecution, on the other hand, the issues raised by these tapes are different.  To them it seems that the introduction of the tapes into evidence is only a means to divert attention from the fact that Ms. Bhutto and her husband are guilty of corruption.  Their argument before the Supreme Court will attempt to bar the admission of the tapes into evidence on the grounds that the phone tappings were obtained unlawfully. In the United States, for example, the Supreme Court has held that under the Constitution a conviction obtained on evidence disclosed an unlawful search (which include phone tappings) cannot stand. The zeal of the prosecution team can be understood.  For them, the threat is that Ms. Bhutto and her husband will be acquitted on a technicality.  The American Supreme Court judge Benjamin Cardozo once expressed a similar view on the American law in People v. Defore (242 NY 13), describing it as one by which “the criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.”  But one wonders if the prosecution’s zeal has not clouded their better judgment: A convict is still entitled to a fair trial.  Denying Benaizir this right can set an awful precedent.  The rule of law cannot be denied, for even the devil is entitled to a fair trial.

Robert Bolt’s play, “A Man for All Seasons”, sets out an eloquent defense of the rule of law. Henry VIII’s former Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, refused to take an oath “renouncing all obedience to the Bishop of Rome” and acknowledging the King as head of the Church of England.  Of course, he was tried for treason (the analogies with Pakistan are so glaringly obvious that one need not dwell on them).

Richard Rich, once a friend of More’s, gave fatal evidence against him.  In the play, Rich’s treachery is forecast in a powerful exchange between More, his daughter, Margret, and her husband-to-be:

MARGRET (speaking of Rich): Father, that man’s bad.

MORE:  There is no law against that.

ROPER:  There is! Gods law!

MORE:  Then God can arrest him.

ROPER:  Sophistication upon sophistication.

MORE:  No, sheer simplicity.  The law, Roper, the law.  I know what’s legal not what’s right.  And I’ll stick to what’s legal.

ROPER:  Then you set Man’s law above God’s!

MORE:  No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact – I’m not God.  The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can’t navigate, I’m no voyager.  But in the thickets of the law, oh there I’m a forester.  I doubt if there’s a man alive who could follow me there, thank God . . . (He says this to himself.)

ALICE  (exasperated, and as is pointing to Rich): While you talk, he’s gone!

MORE:  And go he should if he was the Devil himself until he broke the law!

ROPER:  So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

MORE:  Yes.  What would you do?  Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER:  I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE  (roused and excited): Oh? (Advances on Roper.)  And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?  (Leaves him.)  This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – Man’s law, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?  (Quietly.)  Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

It’s a pity, then, that More’ faith in the law did not work out.  He was condemned to a traitor’s death, but ‘mercifully’ this was commuted to just execution.  Of course, Benazir’s case is not one of life imitating art, and so Thomas More (and his gory fate) cannot be used as arguments.  Our Supreme Court should give Ms. Bhutto the fair trail she deserves, and ensure that the rule of law is protected and preserved.

Where is our Rosa Parks

My column in The Express Tribune today is about the exclusionary nature of cities.  You can't fit more than a thought in an 800-word piece, so I'll be the first to say mine is nowhere near the last word on the subject.

What I also find interesting is how the inequity/exclusion in cities is a global phenomenon.  There's some solace, I suppose, in knowing we're not the only ones.

My piece brought back recollections of another I wrote some years ago for The Friday Times:

A friend recently told me of her interest in global warming.  I asked why.  I often do.  It’s a great way of finding out what the word “environment” means to someone.  “It’s already so hot,” she complained.  “If it gets any hotter, even the ACs won’t work.”

The Lahore I grew up in was a sleepy little metropolis.  It wasn’t the Lahore of the 1950s or 1960s where my parents’ generation wore drain-pipe trousers and The Mall was where writers and intellectuals rubbed shoulders at Pak Tea Houses.  My Lahore was the Lahore of Zia and the 1980s, where everyone either lived in Gulberg or in far-off Model Town.  The Lahore of today is a behemoth.  It stretches from the North shore of the Ravi past Thokar Niaz Beg in the South while the DHA – when it finally completes and colonizes its ten or so Phases – is fast approaching India.  Today’s Lahore is a mixture of things: a confused and congested Old and older City, where pollution and poverty detract from the beauty and complexity of the built heritage; a post-partition sprawl trying to come to grips with the demands commercialization and consumerism place on the existing urban fabric; and a mess of residential housing (some public, some private and some controlled by the Army) that exhibits the hopes and aspirations of today’s Lahoris – all expressing their aesthetic sensibilities through the homes they build.

To a large extent, my politics were shaped – as are everyone’s – by my environment.  But for me, it was the limited urban environs of the Lahore I knew that shaped by opinions.  My Lahore was the Lahore where an active civil society objected to the treatment of women under the Hadood Laws and the religious persecution of the Ahmedi and minority communities by a host of Blasphemy Laws.  Those were (and are) pressing issues of the day, and no one but civil society gave the establishment a run for their money on these issues.  But this civil society never protested for clean drinking water; the Lahore I knew always had clean drinking water.  The sewers worked and, other than an hour’s load shedding here or there, there was no reason to take the local government to task.  There were also never any protests for better educational institutions; all my friends went to Aitchison, Kinnaird, LAS, LGS, LCAS and the host of other O and A level acronyms that passed for schools in residential districts.  Oh, and of course, everyone had a home.

Roti, kapra and makan?  That was and remains a slogan of the poor, for “the masses”.   Now that I think of it, when was the last time civil society protested against poor civic utilities?  Or the lack of a clean sewerage system?  Or the fact their daughters don’t have a school to go to?  It hasn’t because it hasn’t needed to.

A disclaimer: Civil Society has and does play an indispensable role in Pakistan’s politics.  It has shaped and refined the quality of debate and sophistication of argument.  It has taken on issues – like women’s rights, religious freedoms and, more recently, the judiciary and the imposition of Emergency – when few dare to do so.  On the national level, it has been able to amend laws and to change public perceptions.  But it has always had the luxury to choose from many issues that plague our Republic.

Just as my politics were shaped by my physical environment, my friend’s opinion on global warming reflects hers.  In her world, everyone has an AC and, if they don’t, well, they can eat cake!  She is from a Lahore where the 4 kanal “farm house” is the residential accommodation of choice, catered by two automobiles and a phalanx of split units.  Fuel conservation for her is not public transport, its not using the older car.

Our urban environments have made elitists of us all.  This is not a popular thing to say, as it goes against the grain (Islam-, we are told, teaches us that we are all equal).  But it is a false shackle.  Just as we hoisted it on ourselves, we can take it off.  The secret lies in identifying the elitism and segregation that lies everywhere in our urban environment.  Then, if one is so inclined, it’s just a matter of casting it away.

There’s a high wall separating the Cantonment from the non-military homes off of Zarrar Shaheed Road (the stretch of Allama Iqbal Road before it changes to Barki Road).  As if the residents of that locality do not have a right to gaze onto the green belt and ceaseless private traffic.  The smaller entrances to DHA are actually guarded by the Punjab Police – there to ensure undesirables do not enter.  Some time ago, a snake charmer – trying his best to answer my questions about his most lucrative neighborhoods – told me he wasn’t allowed in the Cantonment or DHA.  Everyone’s seem police pickets in Gulberg, but how many times do you see the police pulling over the driver of a private automobile.  It’s almost always motorcycles and rickshaws.   These are bit little examples of the segregation actively enforced and applied before us.   On a larger scale, you have a city designed entirely for those who own or drive automobiles.  Anyone who is unlucky enough to commute by foot will find nothing but a torturous urban environment.

How long can such an urban environment sustain itself?  At some point, one of the many millions of have-nots who support the lifestyle of the haves will stand up and take notice of this segregation.  They will ask why their families aren’t allowed in Cantonment’s Polo Ground Park.  Then someone will ask why just a handful’s of God’s own civil servants – all employees of the people, mind you – continue to occupy such a large tract of urban land in the middle of the city, while at the same time property prices skyrocket and there’s a shortage of housing units.

On a cool December evening in 1955, 42 year old Rosa Parks refused to vacate seats reserved for whites on a public bus.  Her simple and elegant protest started the Montgomery Bus Boycott and earned her the recognition (by the US Congress) as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”  By simply refusing to play the immoral rules of the game, Rosa Parks began the fight for racial equality in the US.  When will our cities produce their Rosa Parks?  Who will be the first to react to the classist segregation that identifies us and forms our world-view?

Open Letter to the Competition Commission of Pakistan

13 February 2012

Ms. Rahat Kaunain Hassan

Chairperson

Competition Commission of Pakistan

7^th Floor South

Islamabad Stock Exchange Towers

55-B Jinnah Avenue, Islamabad

(rhassan@cc.gov.pk)

Notice of Contravention of Competition Act, 2010 by Lahore Bar Association

Madam Chairperson:

As a lawyer before serving the Competition Commission of Pakistan, I’m sure you spent your share of mid-summer mornings and afternoons sweating in the dust of the civil courts of Lahore.  I once spent my birthday – which is in June – in court, wondering why on earth grown men and women would wear black woollen suits in the heat.  But that the Aiwan-e-Adal for you.  You either love it or leave it.

I’ve had countless mornings spent rushing to ensure attendance and then, later in the day, arguing a full roster of cases.  Of course one has to take breaks.  I’m not a great fan of the Bar Room – it’s dark, hot and full of lawyers.  So I usually take a refreshment outside.  The fellows who operate the canteen are friends, as are the small army of crate-wielding urchins serving up cold water or soda throughout the court complex.

Madam Chairperson, I wish to tell you an open secret: The only antidote for civil court is a cold bottle of lemon barley squash.  It’s my drink of choice.  The elixir of the dewani trade.  I usually ask for it by name.  I’m not a fan of the soda pop.  As I’ve grown older, I’ve developed an intolerance to the carbonated water, caffeine and sugar.  I’m sure the lemon barley has its share of sugar but, god help me, it doesn’t give me the shakes like the fizzy stuff.  No sir, a few sips lemon barley and I’m up for haggling with the likes of rent-controllers and guardian judges.

Except today, Madam Chairperson, I find that the one thing I’d look forward to whilst appearing in the Civil Court is no more.  That is to say, I have it on good authority that the Lahore Bar Association – having taken far too literal an interpretation to their name – have prohibited the sale of Shezan beverages anywhere on the premises of the Aiwan-e-Adal.  Shezan, of course, is the brand that produces lemon barley.  They also produce a mango juice but, if you ask me, the mango juice wallah – Haji Sahib or something – near Data Darbar has perfected this particular type of juice and, well, once you’ve tasted it, Shezan or no Shezan, it’s either the real deal or no deal.

Anyway.

The Lahore Bar Association, I learn, has decided to impose this restriction on sweet beverages in civil court because, they say, Shezan is a company owned by members of the Ahmedi sect.  Of course, I have no idea whether this is so.  Why would I?  Would anyone even care?  But the Lahore Bar Association seems to have a strong point of view on this issue.  The end result, so to speak, is now I don’t have the choice of selecting my favourite beverage when I go about my working day.  This is clearly a preposterous and non-sustainable situation.  I mean, if we let this sort of thinking out of hand, next thing you know people will be asking us to burn the Lahore Resolution of 1940 simply because Sir Zafarullah Khan was one of its authors. 

So why am I writing to you?

I read that section 4(1) of the Competition Act, 2010 prohibits undertakings from making decisions in respect of the supply, distribution or control of goods that has the object or effect of preventing or restricting competition.  I understand that Section 2(1)(q) puts a wide definition on the phrase “undertaking” – wide enough, I think, to include an entity such as the Lahore Bar Association.  If this is so, wouldn’t the Lahore Bar Association’s decision to prohibit the sale of Shezan beverages on the premises of the Civil Court amount to an agreement prohibited by the Competition Act, 2010 and, according to Section 4(3), void?

I have read that the Competition Commission has decided similar issues.  For example, in the Matter of Murree Brewery Company Limited vs. SIZA Foods (Private) Limited (2009), the Commission took notice of the practice of restaurants such as McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken to have exclusive arrangements with either Coca-Cola or Pepsi Cola.  These exclusivity agreements meant that the Murree Brewery Company was unable to sell its non-alcoholic beverages in these restaurants.  The Commission saw to it that these restrictive trade practices were changed.

Madam Chairperson, I hereby formally complain to you of the prohibited agreement put into effect by the Lahore Bar Association in its decision to prohibit the sale of Shezan within the premises of the Lahore Civil Court.  The law is a dreary enough profession.  Not having small mercies like lemon barley would take whatever colour’s left in it.  It would also expose me to products which, as I said, I simply can’t stomach anymore. I therefore request you to step in and show these jokers that there is law in Pakistan.  That it is sensible.  And that it doesn’t give a hoot about the belief of the person who makes your favourite drink.

With best regards.

Very truly yours,

Ahmad Rafay Alam

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

I wrote this piece immediately after BB's assassination.  Lahore, like other cities, was paralysed with strikes and riots.  A three-day mourning period meant that everything was shut.  My column was about cities and the environment, but I wanted to pay tribute.  This piece was published in The News.

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

Before Partition, political dissent often manifested itself in violence towards traffic lights.  Apparently, during the halcyon days of the Pakistan Movement, it was considered routine to attack and destroy traffic signals at the slightest provocation.  These British introductions represented, it seems, enough of the Colonial establishment to justify, in the eyes of passionate “freedom fighters,” such vandalism.  Sadly, not even Partition has spared the fate of the innocent traffic light; they have remained a constant target and victim whenever the public turns unruly, much to the chagrin of better minded people.  In today’s day and age, when Pakistan is supposed to be run by Pakistanis and in the interest of Pakistanis, it’s considered bad form to take on a defenseless traffic device. 

On Friday, before prayers, my wife and I decided to venture onto the streets of Lahore anxious to see for ourselves the truth of the television and numerous text message reports of violence throughout this and other places in the country.  It was midmorning and the city streets were empty.  In the evening before, the President had announced a three day period of grief. 

Lahore was beautiful and unaccompanied by the everyday noise, traffic, dust and that general sense of congestion that makes it less and less attractive.  Every undulation of the Mall was uninterrupted and shafts of midmorning light pierced through the fresh tree line.  The fact it took something so gruesome to bring us a glimpse of its features weighed heavily on the both of us.

In Gulberg, the ubiquitous green PML-Q bicycle banners, so amusingly defaced on the Canal when they were put up, had now been violently torn down.  The path was clear.  This evidence of protest began at the bottom of Guru Mangat road and made its way to Liberty Market.  There, of the four large posters (depicting the Gulberg Town Nazim, the City Nazim, the Chief Minister and his son, Moonis Elahi, who is contesting for a provincial seat from the area), celebrating the recent redevelopment of the area only two bore marks of violence: those of the former Chief Minister and his Prince Ascending.  Clear evidence that they were systematically targeted.

The location of burnt tire marks was very instructive.  They delineated the political allegiance of each area.  On the Shalimar Link road, towards the Shalimar Gardens, every 500 or so meters lay shattered glass and the charred remains of burnt rubber: evidence of the anger of the mob.  The air was tense.  As if something was happening.  Every dozen or so meters small groups of men huddled at the mouths of the alleys and lanes that feed into that artery.  From the majority of the election banners, one could tell this was a PPP area; the men on the streets residents eager to share gossip from the night before.

Near the UET those green PML-Q bicycles banners stood untouched on street lights.  Clearly visible amid the desolation – we may have been the only car on that road at the time – they bisected the Grand Trunk Road like a row of artificial green attempting, tragically, to take the place of a tree-lined median.  On top of a nearby building, a 30x60 hoarding proudly displayed the credentials of that area’s candidate.  Yet there was no one on the road to see it.  The seat, it was clear, belonged to the former dispensation.

There were also signs of violence along the Shalimar Road and at Laxmi Chowk.  But by far the largest protest demonstration must have occurred in front of the Lahore Press Club.  There, shattered glass lay in mounds and the mouth of Durand road lay covered in the debris of burnt rubber and nearby PML-Q hoardings.  From the vandalized posters around the area, angry crowds must have seeped to Simlar Pahari, collected in large numbers there and then marched up Davis Road, past the PML House, and onto the Mall.  The fact that nothing further than that point appeared to have been vandalized tells us about the state of the crowd.  By this time, their spontaneous anger, shock and frustration would have given way to grief and sadness.  This would have deadened their vigour.   

At the Governor’s House, near Naqi Market and Hall road large number of police and Rangers milled about.  Some were taking in the morning tabloids, all of which carried front page photos of the carnage of the night before.  Driving past, it seemed that they were holding up Benazir placards.  More bored police, some faces lost on the yet unopened front page, sat about in the Cantonment and all those other high-end, and, therefore, “high risk” residential areas.  There were no signs of violence there.  In Defence, one could physically take in the fact that the area has the highest density of automobile ownership in the city:  Because this wasn’t a typical day off, because there was no visiting or working to be done, every driveway was full.  Each family safely huddled together.

I remember witnessing Benazir’s return to Pakistan.  She landed in this then sleepy metropolis on April 1986.   The crowds that greeted her were unprecedented.  It took her all day to get from the airport, past our residence on the Mall and on towards Minto Park.  The fact that she – at that time relatively politically inexperienced – got the reaction she did, and that too in capital of the civil and military establishment must have shaken General Zia.  Lahoris can spot political potential from miles.  Even the significance of Chief Justice Chaudhry’s reception in this city over two decades later in May of this year was measured against Benazir’s welcome.  If only one could have read the features of Lahore’s face that morning.  I’m sure its message would be equally profound for our recently retired General.  This happened on his watch, and try as he may, he won’t be able to spurn this legacy.

On 14 February 2006 lunatic extremists took vandalism to new heights by ambushing an otherwise peaceful protest against those silly cartoons.  The resulting looting, vandalism and arson spree stretched from the Metropolitan Bank on Kashmir Road all the way to the motorbikes parked at Bank Square.  The mob – boys in their teens interspersed with the odd extremist – also took on street lights.  All the lights on the signals on that area of the Mall were ruthlessly attacked.  But, as I said, Lahore can spot political talent from miles.  It saw no reason to condone the protest.  On Friday, I didn’t spot a single broken traffic light.