Pakistan completely lacks political leadership: Asma

LONDON: The newly elected President of the Supreme Court Bar Association and a leading human rights activist Asma Jahangir stated that Pakistan is passing through the worst period of its 63-year-old history because it totally lacked political leadership and the current ruling set-up was visionless.
She was speaking at the annual democracy lecture organised in partnership with the McDougall Trust and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and arranged by Electoral Reform International Services at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) here on Thursday night.
She termed the current government a hangover from the past and said it was a “dysfunctional government where corruption continues to plague everything.” She said the biggest drawback was that the current government lacked will to do anything substantially good.
She said the west and even countries like India loved Pakistani dictators for some strange reasons and expressed aspersion on the democratically elected leaders. She asked the civil society of the world to support democracy in Pakistan as the country’s salvation lay in democracy and there was a need to strengthen and fortify the system in the larger national interest.
Asma jehnagir told the audience that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government was a civilian dictatorship, and it had many ugly sides, contrary to the perception that Bhutto was a people’s man. “Bhutto was a man of the establishment and all his policies were approved by the establishment,” she said about the founder of the Pakistan People’s Party. She warned that she will lead lawyers to street protest and civil disobedience if any extra constitutional measures were adopted to oust the current government as it will be a fatal blow to the democratic process.
Asma Jehnagir said that long periods of military rule and constant dictatorial interruptions had bred fundamentalist elements which ironically are out now to destabilise the country but lamented that the establishment, it seemed, has not learned lessons from the past and was pressing ahead with its regional and foreign policies at all costs. She called for the civilian control over foreign policy affairs, stronger role of opposition, accountability across the board, extension of the government writ to the tribal agencies and grant of socio-economic rights to the people and fostering tolerance and acceptance in the society.
She said Pakistani people want more and better democracy but for the real democracy to take roots it was important that real leadership from the middle class was introduced through electoral reforms.
Asma jehnagir has been awarded Unesco/Bilbao prize for the promotion of culture of human rights. She called on the government to part ways with the nationalist rhetoric and learn to live in peace with its neighbours. She said the human rights violations were continuing and people were being disappeared from up and down the country by the intelligence agencies while the central government was helpless.
She said the current judiciary was split into many sections such as PCO judges, Dogar judges and stay order judges. She said a negative trend has developed in Pakistan that anyone who spoke for the reform of the judiciary was considered anti-judiciary. “It has become like a religion to praise the judges and criticising them is like committing blasphemy.”