Elections not entertainments

American jurist Brandeis once wrote that “sunlight is the best of disinfectants”. Both sunlight and disinfectant could be used for our bar elections.

All the cycles we witness are the same conventions: sumptuous luncheons, birthday celebrations under disguise, banners and panaflex-laden courts. These spectacles have no connection with law or representation but everything to do with money. The attorney who is unable to afford daawats is gagged before his programme is heard.

This is why the Rules of the Pakistan Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils were designed with such austerity. They prohibit canvassing by banners, hoardings, stickers, or calendars; they forbid meals as inducements; they forbid visits to voters' doors; they even forbid the exhibition of arms in campaigns. Personal contact, a mere letter, or a visiting card half the size of a five-inch square are the only forms allowed. Breach is considered misconduct and disqualifies the applicant. These are not cosmetic prohibitions. They are the bare bones of a just election.

This year, the Punjab Bar Council acted in accordance with its own law rather than in line with public sentiment. The executive committee sent show-cause notices to candidates who were caught at social gatherings that were also campaign meetings, ordering them to appear in September. Once in this lifetime, the threat of disqualification does not read like a dead letter. The point is that a ballot cannot be purchased with biryani.

In addition to these ancient rules, the Council tried a more radical reform: changes in the election code which aimed to guarantee that only practising lawyers could challenge. The object was simple: the Council hoped to restore elections to people who practise the profession in a day-to-day life rather than to absentee lords of law, by making eligibility to practice a qualifying factor.

That reform, however, has been stayed by the Lahore High Court. The court’s order has kept open the door for non-practising licensees to remain electorally relevant. While the merits remain sub judice, the effect is unfortunate. The amendments were not elitist tinkering; they were a continuation of the same spirit behind existing rules: to level the field and to prevent the profession from being captured by those who neither plead cases nor bear the responsibilities of practice.

The logic finds echoes abroad. In 2019, the Bar Council of India amended its rules to curb corrupt practices in bar association elections. The amendments prohibited parties “with or without food or drinks”, banned hoardings and posters in court precincts, capped expenditure, and made eligibility contingent upon active practice. Although challenged, the thrust was unmistakable: representation belongs to practitioners, not passengers.

American election law follows the same instinct. The infamous Georgia case makes it a criminal offence to give “money or gifts, including… food and drink” within 150 feet of a polling place. It is not that sandwiches are sinister; it is that inducement, however dressed, is inconsistent with free choice.

This is all common sense. To say that only practising lawyers should be candidates is no more radical than saying that only practising doctors should head a medical association. The bar’s legitimacy depends not just on what it pleads in court, but on how it governs itself.

The Lahore High Court has, for the moment, stayed that logic. But the profession should not. If we allow feasts and absentee licensees to define our politics, we will reap weak institutions and stronger cynicism. If we enforce our code and insist on practice as the threshold, we may recover elections where ideas, not invitations, decide outcomes.

The bar cannot demand integrity of others while refusing to apply it to itself. The amendments may be under judicial stay, but their spirit is alive in the Rules. It is for the practising lawyer to keep pressing the case – not at a dinner table, but in the court of professional conscience.

The writer is a lawyer and policy researcher focused on evidence-based legislative reform.