ISLAMABAD, July 20 Former Sindh Governor Lt-Gen (retd) Moinuddin Haider has claimed that military men in uniform can be appointed as governors under the Constitution.

In an informal chat with reporters after a seminar on “Civil-Military Relations and Democracy An account of Two Years”, he conceded that he had taken over as the governor of Sindh in 1997 days after his retirement as a three-star general, but asserted that he had done nothing unconstitutional.

“I had been appointed by an elected government and I served the national interest.”

He was of the view that a sitting general could be appointed as the governor even now as there was no constitutional bar on it.

Legal experts however believe that this is not the case. A constitutional expert told Dawn that under Article 101(2) of the Constitution, a person cannot be appointed as governor unless he was qualified to be elected as a member of the National Assembly.

Earlier, participants of the seminar organised by Pakistan Institute for Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat) observed that military interventions had weakened the institutional governance and harmed the national interest.

Some of the speakers were of the view that poor governance and flawed policies leading to multifarious problems for the common man had provided an opportunity for military intervention as weaknesses created scenarios in which people started looking for a “messiah”.

Defence analyst Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi, Lt-Gen (retd) Moinuddin Haider, Mujibur Rehman Shami, former Punjab governor Shahid Hamid and former defence secretary Lt-Gen (retd) Talat Masood spoke at the seminar.

PML-N MNA Ahsan Iqbal, Senator Tahir Mashhahdi of MQM, Senator Surraya Amiruddin of PPP, Ms Tasneem Siddiqui and Ms Qudsia Arshad, MNAs of PML-N, and PPP MNA Syed Nasir Ali Shah also attended the seminar.

Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi said that although the army was back in the barracks, it remained the most formidable 'political' force in the country capable of affecting the course and direction of political and social change.

He said that rules of engagement between the civil and the military today, from the military perspective, include no civilian interference in internal organisation and services affairs, shared decision-making in defence and foreign affairs, increased role of the army high command in the Pak-US Strategic Dialogue, protection of business and economic interests of the military, etc. “It is the management of these issues that will have implications on the current and future civil-military relations in Pakistan,” he said.