The Price of Conscience
No amount of praise can really describe the courageous, untiring and dedicated efforts of the Citizen Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) in their crusade to restore law and order in the city of Karachi. Recognition was overdue for the two CPLC stalwarts (and guiding force) Nazim Haji and Jameel Yousuf, it was duly given in the Presidential Investiture Ceremony at Islamabad on Republic Day this year. Risking life and limb on a purely voluntary basis, bearding bureaucracy in its den while braving the wrath of the corrupt among the law enforcement agencies on the one hand and the lawless on the other, the CPLC has restored the confidence of society in the fast disappearing human qualities of selflessness, sacrifice and community service. For the CPLC’s two leading persons and their families, an unlimited threat perception around the clock is a constant reminder that conscience has a price, the unending risk is a heavy cross they have to bear for the purposes of ridding those from society who had become its scourge. One of the finest experiments attempted in the realm of sustenance of moral values, that the CPLC has succeeded beyond the imagination of its pioneering founders gives hope to our endangered society. We may be at the edge of the Rubicon, the will of the people will always be stronger than the machinations of evil.
One incident graphically illustrates the present stress and strain on society, it reveals the centrifugal forces acting to dismember the mores of civilization as we know it and condemn it to the dust heap. Evidencing from the confessions of a major criminal involved in the organised lifting of cars in Karachi and their disposal thereof in other provinces, some leading politicians and high ranking officials stood implicated. The news item was staggering in content, if untrue it could not be more libellous or defamatory. If it was concocted it was incumbent upon the Government to nail down the source and subject those responsible for its initiation to severe punishment pro-rata to the very crimes they had accused the various personages of. After all it cast aspersion on the character and integrity on the supposed guardians of the law, smearing the pillars of our society who are primarily responsible to uphold and maintain sanctity thereof. It chronicled an evil that should be the domain of hardened criminals, how could it ever be a factual account of these privileged to function in the name of justice? In the hands of criminals, the rendering of justice becomes a crime. The reaction of the Federal Government was surprising, it preferred to shroud the issue in a veiled cloak.
