Need to ban supercession by elected lawyer representatives.

The cancer of supercession by elected officials in courts - i.e. replacing a lawyer handling a case with an office holder to affect the case and the judge - is one of the major ailments eating away at the public's confidence in the legal system. It has made elected offices financially lucrative and has corroded the moral authority and the quality of candidates that are elected. Most illegal lockdowns of courts trace back to vested interests of office holders and often refusal of judges to cow down before said office holders. It is thus essential that replacing counsels by officeholders is banned.

To date, the Bar Councils, which are the regulatory bodies for lawyers, have continually failed to stamp down on this ever-increasing practice. Whereas office holders by virtue of their office should be more accountable and not less, tragically, these days holding offices seems to translate to less transparency and less accountability and a greater misplaced sense of entitlement for officeholders. It should be the other way round. There should be a stricter code of conduct for Bar representatives, stricter than that of the ordinary lawyer. Officeholders are after all supposed to be setting an example. Banning supercession for them should be an effective first step towards reclaiming lost moral authority of the Bar.

In 2015, I was elected the Secretary of the Lahore High Court Bar. The very next day, a Sunday, I was offered a lucrative amount to replace a previous office holder in a Drugs case. The offeror, who I did not know, had sought me out and did not care that I had never practised criminal law in my life. I declined and have not since superceded. But few others seem to want to follow my choice. It is after all expensive being honest; one has to give up a lot. The public is always ready to offer up temptation believing 'ohdaydar karna' is one of the best ways to get an expedited decision in their favour.

Sadly, supercession has corrupted the election process of Bar Associations and Bar Councils too. People are mostly standing in elections now for money. Few even bother to share agendas or have a plan of what they want to do. With this lust for office has followed huge investments and spending of monies to win elections. This in turn has led to more desperate election campaigns, and if elected, a greater lust for making the money back many times over. This is a vicious cycle that seems to be ever accelerating.

In view of this, I, as Member of...