The head of the Jamaat`s Islamabad office, Zubair Khan, said that when the chief justice was sacked by General Musharraf in 2007, then-JI chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed called on his workers and supporters to take to the streets to protest because “one person cannot be allowed to send justice home.” Khan explained that JI`s support for the movement is essentially a political struggle for the constitution, because for the Jamaat, it is not martial law, but a democratic political process that will bring about a change in the governance of the country. He stressed that a real democratic change in the political system will take place successfully if the “consciousness of the people is awakened” so that “the people change the system itself. That is the only solution. Khan alluded here to the expectations and desires of those political opportunists and ideologues who often turn to military rulers to reorganize the social and political order in Pakistan. The rule of law is particularly important for influencing the economic development of developing countries and countries with economies in transition. So far, the term “rule of law” has been used mainly in English-speaking countries, and even with regard to established democracies such as Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany or Japan, it has not yet been fully clarified. A common language between common law lawyers and civil law countries, as well as between the legal communities of developed and developing countries, is crucial for studying the links between the rule of law and the real economy. [89] In the United Kingdom, the rule of law is a long-standing principle of how the country is governed, dating back to the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Bill of Rights of 1689. [26] [49] [50] In the 19th century, A. V.
This disillusionment with popular politics intensified with the return of military rule in 1977. During the reign of General Zia (1977-1988), these classes were even more disappointed by the blurring of boundaries between local favoritism, ethnicity, religion and politics, as Zia manipulated national and local politics in a way that weakened the influence of political parties on the electorate. For example, in 1985, it held elections exclusively on a non-partisan basis – thus fostering the emergence of local strongmen representing various ethnic and religious interests and groups. This fragmentation of people`s political power helped Zia remain at the forefront of a tightly controlled political system of favoritism and corruption. Many activists and commentators continue to assess the legal movement by examining what it has accomplished in the long term, both legally and politically, beyond its immediate goal of restoring justice and challenging the rule of General Musharraf. However, it is more interesting to examine the movement by asking what we can learn about class politics and the appeal of liberal rights, constitutionalism and the rule of law in Pakistan today. The language of constitutional rule and rights, as Munir A. Malik argued, should serve as a bridge between lawyers, the educated middle class, and civil society and political activists. It has managed to reach a weak consensus – a historically rare event in Pakistan – between ideologically divergent political parties and the professional and educated classes on the restoration of justice and democracy, and to provide content for notions of corruption, political power and numerous social and political crises in the Pakistani state and society.
The call for the sanctity of constitutional rights and the need to restore justice and democracy in order to protect and enforce them allowed for the creation of a broader alliance between lawyers, various political parties, and middle-class activists, although the meanings they all ascribed to the Constitution and what they wanted to achieve were different. Although the preservation of constitutional rights was interpreted as essential for an effective challenge to military rule, many in the movement disagreed with the principles underlying these rights. Below I discuss the divergent views of the “rule of law” among lawyers and one of the movement`s most active political-religious parties, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), to show how these actors differed in their expectations of constitutionalism. For most lawyers, the rule of law and constitutional rule were the means to achieve “social justice” in Pakistani society, while for the JI, the formation of an Islamic welfare state depended on the rule of law, which was based on a constitution that already confirmed Allah`s sovereignty. 3 I focus on lawyers and the Jamaat to present a point of view of the movement. Their views are not the only ones, of course, but they represent the main concerns of those who mobilized around them and political parties that advocated similar ideological interpretations of constitutionalism and the rule of law. . In March 2007, lawyers from across Pakistan rose up against the eight-year military regime of General Pervez Musharraf when he sacked Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. 1 Chaudhry C.J.
was removed from office for abuse of authority. Chaudhry, who until then had refrained from questioning the legitimacy of the military regime and Musharraf`s executive actions, had reversed the government`s privatization of Pakistani steel mills and admitted the cases of “missing persons” – alleged members of various Islamic and nationalist militant groups who are under the extrajudicial custody of Pakistan`s security agencies. .
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