Fighting for constitutional primacy in Pakistan
The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty … Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
A country without a constitution or rule of law, where there is no independent judiciary and no fundamental freedoms and rights, has no place in the contemporary comity of civilised nations. Government and politics, as the world today knows them, are alien to Pakistan. The scene in the country today bears resemblance to Thomas Hobbes's notion of primitive anarchy, marked by a "war of one against all", as well as to Rousseau's idealisation of the "noble savage". Unfortunately, for more than half a century now, Pakistan has been mired in political and economic uncertainty, and has had neither domestic stability nor constitutional integrity.