Road rage

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Pakistan is not an easy place to drive in given how there is hardly any meaningful deterrent to stop commuters from breaking the rules and a general widespread lack of basic civic sense that makes the experience of getting from A to B a particularly stressful experience, especially if you are of the rare breed that follows most traffic regulations. Road rage is therefore very common; it’s inevitable in fact, which results in physical altercations and in some very extreme cases, even death. The incident that took place in the capital yesterday, involving PTI MPA Abida Raja’s husband, Chaudhry Khurram, and a sessions court judge, Malik Jehangir Awan, is of the extreme variety as it ended in not only a fistfight between the two but also firing of a bullets by the judge at Mr. Khurram’s feet in order to disengage him. While the judge may be guilty of ‘improperly overtaking’ the other car, what ensued at a gasoline station later, where the judge had parked his car, which is clearly visible in CCTV footage, is use of excessive force by the MPA’s husband. It is unlikely that Mr. Khurram was aware of the fact that the person in the car that had cut him off on the road earlier was a trigger-happy armed judge, perhaps instead expecting a relative ‘nobody’ he could beat up and get away with it. And that is the problem here, this sense of being above the law due to family relations, in this case having a wife who is an MPA of the ruling party, a party that has over the years resorted to physically assaulting its opponents inside parliament and on TV talk shows, with no reprimanding from the top leadership, not even a slap on the wrist, rather a pat on the back and a well done.

That the incident took place opposite the foreign office building on Constitutional Avenue where other sensitive installations like the Supreme Court and Prime Minister’s House are situated, is particularly shameful considering the parties involved. Although the matter has been resolved with neither side pressing charges, MPA Abida Raja should be brought to book by the party. Otherwise the impression that elected representatives, their spouses and relatives are somehow above the law, will be further solidified, creating an environment where similar incidents will continue to happen. After all, it is Prime Minister Imran Khan who vowed to “set an example of how the law should be the same for everyone”.