Last fall, in anticipation of a possible court order that would render him ineligible for re-election, President Musharraf declared a national state of emergency, suspended Pakistan’s 1973 constitution, and dismissed numerous major judges—in effect, dismantling the nation’s legal system and erasing the already-tenuous separation between its military and its government.
These events, combined with the December assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, have lead to a less stable situation in Pakistan. Berkman and Fay’s article describes the recent upswing in protests against Musharraf’s violations of democracy. The constitution was restored on December 15, when the state of emergency ended (though the international NGO Human Rights Watch, among others, voiced sharp criticism of the true nature of that restoration), but 60 removed judges rema
in to be reinstated. Reuters India reports that Aitzaz Ahsan, a resistance leader and president of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, predicts more protests.One of the most important steps, in a developing country, towards procuring people’s basic needs is maintaining a government that is just and accountable. The corruption that President Musharraf and his regime cultivate in Pakistan—scolded publically by, yet tacitly condoned by, the United States— is detrimental to the humanitarian development goals that we at Barakat seek to achieve. Educational parity cannot be achieved when the government is more concerned with maintaining its own power than supporting the needs of its people. Undemocratic governance and inequality go hand in hand— as long as power struggles continue at the top level of the government, the people’s needs will continue to go unaddressed by those who are supposed to heed them.
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