LAHORE, March 29: The successive military governments in the country have suppressed politics and civil society now owes the responsibility to revive it in its true sense.

This was stated by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) director I A Rehman while speaking at a seminar on the current political crisis organised by students and teachers at the Lahore University of Management Sciences on Thursday.

He said the successive military regimes also stopped students and teachers unions from functioning on campuses besides rendering intelligentsia and trade unions ineffective in the country.

“Political parties, trade unions, students and teachers unions and community organisations are engine of change in a society.”

He said the political parties established by the military regimes came to an end by themselves as soon as these governments were replaced.

Mr Rehman said the episode of rendering Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) nonfunctional should be welcomed in a way that it motivated masses to look at the situation around and see who was governing them.

He said it was students’ duty as well as their right to look at how things were being done and where society was going.

Saying that all decent societies respect judicial system, he added it was a matter of grave concern that the successive military governments had bulldosed the judiciary while referring to the amendments to the Constitution aimed at controlling the judiciary. “A society without justice is a herd,” he said.

Lahore High Court Bar Association coordination committee chairman Khawar Mahmood said army was the biggest hurdle in the development of society.

He said military intervention in the political system of the country could never be regarded as legal. He said the present military government was unconstitutional and illegitimate.

He said the lawyers’ fraternity had always launched movements in the country. Mr Mahmood said he being a lawyer as well as a political worker was working to restore rule of law and bring decency in society. He said the current judicial crisis was not an issue related to the Chief Justice of Pakistan alone but to the nation and the country as a whole.

He said the CJP’s rejection to the president’s order for tendering resignation showed that another institution in the country had opposed the military government. He said the reference against the CJP was quite weak.