Interim Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar said on Saturday that social order can “never ever be compromised for the rule of law” as he emphasised striking a balance between the two.
“We are committed and understand that the performance and the participatory idea of democracy is what is needed but at the same time, you have to strike a balance — there’s a rule of law and then there’s a rule of order,” he stressed.
The premier passed these remarks during an interactive session with a delegation of students from Harvard, who are in Pakistan on a visit. The students had also interacted with Chief of Army Staff Gen Asim Munir yesterday.
A number of topics came up for discussion in the meeting today, including the state of democracy, the economy, brain drain and the challenges Pakistan is facing with terrorism.
Interacting with the students on the future of democracy in Pakistan, PM Kakar said the “incomplete completion of tenure of any government is not at all undemocratic”.
“Democracy gives a guarantee to the strength of the Parliament and in Pakistan’s case, last 15 years post-2008, we had successive three stints of Parliament,” he said, adding that the Parliament could be changed through constitutional means which has happened in the country.
“You have to agree that members of the Parliament have the inherent right to emplace or replace a government.
“I have not seen any act in the past 15 years where the case has been otherwise,” he asserted, stressing that “democracy is a process not an event”.
In an indirect reference to India, he said, “In our neighbourhood, the ritual of democracy has been exercised for the last seven decades but it is heading towards electoral autocracy.
“Is this the kind of democracy you would envision and want to have for the USA or UK or France? I don’t think so.”
Putting weight behind striking the balance between the rule of law and the rule of order, he said: “In Pakistan’s context, there are times where the normal laws get suspended or are not the solution to the kind of challenges we face, like our security challenge … so the priority is that you first secure life, secure social and political order and later on you go for issues of civil liberties, democratic principles so on and so forth.”
