LAHORE, Feb 12: Supreme Court Bar Association president Tariq Mahmood has said all military regimes have added to the destruction of the constitution and other national institutions.

"The struggle for the rule of law has become extremely difficult because successive undemocratic rules have caused an untold depredation to the entire civil administration which now seems completely under the dominance of a powerful establishment," the SCBA president said on Thursday.

Tariq Mahmood was speaking at a reception hosted on Thursday by the People's Lawyers Forum to felicitate him for his election to top office of the SCBA. He said the lawyers had waged a relentless struggle to block once for all the rule of undemocratic forces and establishment of a genuine democracy in the country. This was a difficult path but it was the only way to ensure dignity of the people who had excessively been exploited in the past.

He said in a situation where the nuclear programme had made the whole nation to cut a sorry figure in the world community, the Kashmir dispute seemed more or less settled the way the world powers wanted that to be. A number of institutions had been made redundant or less useful.

The SCBA president said that rising poverty, lack of basic amenities and other political and economic deprivations of most parts of the country demanded that the national resources should be so reallocated to ensure socio-economic development in the shortest possible period.

SCBA's former president Hamid Khan said the independence of judiciary was blown off by judges who legitimized the rule of all the usurpers although they were supposed to protect and safeguard the constitution.

He said all undemocratic rules had damaged vital national interests, including Kashmir, the nuclear programme and democracy. He was highly critical of the way Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan was made to tender an apology. He said Dr Khan was made a scapegoat to cover up national crimes committed by others.

Hamid Khan said efforts were being made to subvert the struggle of the lawyers because they were the only organized force who stood as vanguard of a movement for a democratic order. The movement would continue till the achievement of the goal for rule of law and governance under the constitution.

Ahmad Awais, a candidate for the office of the president of the Lahore High Court Bar Association, said the legal community was committed to defend and protect the constitution and was striving for its restoration to its position before the military take-over.

PPP secretary-general Jahangir Badar said his party would support Mr Awais. He hoped other democratic forces would also do the same. PPP former secretary-general Rafiq Ahmad Sheikh, former judge of the Lahore High Court Saeed Hasan Malik, former minister Afzal Sindhu, Pakistan Bar Council vice-chairperson Kazim Khan and PLF president Syed Tanveer Hashmi were among the other speakers.