OKARA: Rights activist Asma Jahangir has said it is the need of the hour to strengthen civil courts by strengthening bar associations in the country as military courts are no solution to combat terrorism.

She said while talking to this scribe in the committee room of the district bar where she had come for an election campaign for Ramzan Chaudhry, the presidential candidate of the Lahore High Court Bar Association.

She said it was time to develop a new broad-based narrative in the backdrop of the current situation.

To a query about the re-establishment of military courts, Ms Asma said though in the past the superior judiciary had allowed their functioning, the decision was not unanimous.

About the Panama case, she said it had both positive and negative effects -- positive in a sense that the public had got awareness of corruption and the negative in a sense that it had been politicized.

Ms Asma said the Panama case campaigner had no will to eradicate corruption from the society, but his task was only to become the prime minister.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2017