Two news items carried in this newspaper yesterday were representative of a general lack of respect for law and an increasing reliance on muscle or group power. In one such incident members of the Armed Police Battalion at Sheromoni in Khulna city attacked a Canadian-aided eye hospital, injuring 10 people — four of them seriously and damaging properties worth Tk 10 lakh, because they were denied power connection from the hospital's transformer. The other incident is about the manhandling of a magistrate by lawyers in Ra-jshahi, one of whose wife was expelled from an examination hall of the on-going HSC exam for adopting unfair means.

In both the cases the parties resorting to violence are people who by profession ought to be most respectful to law. It is not that one man has committed an offence on the heat of the moment. The men of the legal profession did not pause to think of the merit of the magistrate’s action, instead they came in a body in support of their colleague who considered the expulsion an infringement of his privilege. Similarly, the sepoys — men in uniform — felt no qualms about their illegal demand for power connection and because they are organised and wield some power, they went berserk in around the hospital — unleashing terror.

This is not for the first time that professional groups or uniformed men have been on the side of lawlessness. When people who are supposed to be the uphqlders of discipline, law and social sanity take a myopic view of an issue whenever their undue interests clash with others', it is futile to expect common people to develop great respect for law. Both practitioners and enforcers are violators here. In such a situation, society should better know where the treatment is more urgently due. We all want to take advantage of our position and connection just to circumvent the rules and ethics. Unless we can do away with this attitude and submit ourselves — from the man in the street to one in the highest position — to the compliance of law and order, we will fail to establish a Just and democratic society.