LAHORE, Oct 20: Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has said repeated violations of the Constitution and deviations from rule of law led the country astray and eroded the legal authority.

He said societies where discretionary powers held sway over rule-based governance and where individuals became stronger than the institutions, descended in chaos and anarchy turning everybody a loser in the end.

The CJP expressed these views while addressing the concluding session of a two-day international conference on ‘Peace through Law’, organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association on Saturday at a hotel on The Mall.

The chief justice said, “In societies where rule of law is weak the law loses it force and the people are left with no option but to resort to violence and transgression.”

He said the situation Pakistan was in did not come out of nowhere, adding the people of the country were paying price for sins of the past.

“It is an unfortunate fact that we did not treat the Constitution with sanctity it deserved,” he said and added the sorry events of 1971 could not be de-linked with the subversions suffered by the constitutions of 1956 and 1962.

Similarly, he said, the sectarian, extremist and ethnic violence that had become so rampant in the last decade should be seen in the backdrop of outright subversion of the 1973 Constitution in 1977 and again in 1999.

The CJP further said the cumulative effect of constitutional deviations and weak rule of law in the past had resulted in militant and terrorist tendencies in certain regions of the country.

“If the Constitution and law were strictly followed in letter and spirit, there would have been no room for resorting to terrorism and all the outstanding issues could have been resolved,” he said.

He said as long as the Constitution was adhered to, conflicting interests did not explode, but when it was either abolished or simply sidelined, conflicts became hard to resolve.

The CJP said, “The present judiciary of Pakistan is making a conscious effort that rule of law prevails and corruption is rooted out from the system and that a transparent and rule-based environment is created”.

He pointed out that not only billions of rupees lost to shady government deals were recovered but clear guidelines were also given for good governance.

Justice Chaudhry also praised lawyers and the media for the ‘effective role’ they played during the past many years.

He said any future historian documenting the history of  jurisprudence of contemporary Pakistan would find a clear connection between a watchdog media blowing the whistle on observing any malfunction in the executive branch and a responsive judiciary taking prompt and indiscriminate action.

He said the legal fraternity through their struggle for supremacy of the Constitution and rule of law could and should play a leading role in achieving peace and taking the country forward on the path of constitutionalism.

The CJP went on to say that the restoration or maintenance of peace through adherence to rule of law had increasingly become an acceptable mean for resolving conflicts and terrorism issues.

On the occasion, Supreme Court Bar Association of India president Pravin H Parekh said though Pakistan and India had been involved in a lot of conflicts, there had been continuous peace efforts on the part of the people, civil society, judiciary and recently even the governments of both countries.

He said both Pakistan and India had independent, strong and proactive judiciaries which relied on judgments of each other.

Mr Parekh said both the countries had similar laws as they inherited a common legal legacy from their colonial past. He said India and Pakistan had also same cultures, cuisines and languages which underpinned the historical ties between the two countries.

Mr Parekh said Pakistani singers and artistes enjoyed widespread popularity in India too. Mehdi Hassan was one of those whom people of both countries praised a lot, he added.

He said one of the major evidence of strong cultural ties between the two countries was the marriage of Indian tennis star Sania Mirza with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik.

Earlier, Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan head Yasin Azad in his brief address hailed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for giving a remarkable verdict on Asghar Khan’s petition.

He said the politicians who received money from agencies had no right to do politics.

Many judges of the Supreme Court, Lahore High Court, Islamabad High Court and Sindh High Court also participated in the conference. Lawyers from India were also among the prominent participants.