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SCBA > President's Message

President

President's Message 1/7/2008

Bhutto’s death is a threat to democratic ideals

By: Christopher Krueger
 

Commentators have called the assassination of Benazir Bhutto Pakistan’s “Kennedy moment.” Her death on December 27th, less than two weeks before parliamentary elections in which she would have been a leading candidate, has thrown Pakistan into a state of shock and turmoil.

 

Although Bhutto has been described as a polarizing figure and perhaps a flawed leader, the circumstances of her death are of the most urgent concern to us at present. When political leaders are assassinated to keep them from participating in democratic elections, democracy itself suffers. People who are deprived of the ability to vote for the candidates of their choice may well question the value of democracy. If the political power cannot be the subject of peaceful transition through fair elections, obedience to the rule of law will inevitably wane.

 

Of course, Pakistan was a deeply troubled country even before Bhutto’s death. In mid-December, American Bar Association President William Neukom led a delegation of ABA leaders in a meeting with Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. The ABA leaders presented the signatures of 13,000 American lawyers on petitions calling on Pakistan to restore constitutional law to that nation. Specifically, the ABA urged Pakistan to restore the Pakistani constitution as it existed before the November 3rd emergency decree by President Pervez Musharraf, to reinstate Supreme Court justices and high court judges who were removed from office, and to release protesters wrongly arrested during a state of emergency.

Now, Bhutto’s killing has made the future of democracy in Pakistan even more uncertain. Neverthless, Neukom said in a statement, “The ABA continues to believe that the rule of law offers the best future for Pakistan, and is the path to lasting security. America’s lawyers are committed to advancing the rule of law in Pakistan and other nations.”

Neukom’s sentiments are in the best tradition of the American legal profession. If American lawyers do not ensure that the United States stands up for democratic ideals in Pakistan, the people of that country will lose whatever faith they have left in democracy as a concept. And as one of our most famous judges, Learned Hand, once observed, that faith is the key to democracy itself. “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it,” Hand said. “While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”


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