THE remark of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry that the judiciary has been responsible for the failure of democracy in the country is only part of the story. Hearing a petition seeking the regularisation of services of two Sindh High Court Judges at Islamabad on Monday, he asked the judiciary to accept the responsibility. However, the truth about the failure of democracy, as the course of events in Pakistan's short history unveils, is that the civil and military bureaucracy as well as politicians somehow conspired at various critical junctures to disrupt the process of its development. It is also unfortunate that the judiciary shied away from showing the nerve and uphold the law and Constitution. Principally, it was the acquisition of power that was at the root of these manoeuvrings. Powerful individuals backed by civil and military establishments lusted for power. From Malik Ghulam Muhammad to Ayub Khan, Ziaul Haq and down to Pervez Musharraf runs the same dictatorial instinct. The victims, obviously, were democratic institutions, which could not grow and develop, and the people, who had to suffer the dictatorial whims of the usurpers of power. The adverse consequences are there for everyone to see. It now falls on the current political leadership, in the government as well as the opposition, to work earnestly in the true spirit of democracy to put it on the rails by developing the various institutions of its parliamentary form that the Constitution envisages and attending to the problems of the common man. That can be achieved only when the different organs of the state strictly adhere to the functions assigned to them under the Constitution. Overstepping the limits would put hurdles in the development of democracy and would certainly not serve the purpose.