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A bad miscalculation

In ousting Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, President Pervez Musharraf seems to have made a bad miscalculation. The 1973 Constitution is clear that a judge may be removed only after the Supreme Judicial Council recommends such action to the President after inquiring into the charges against him. There is no other method prescribed for removal, nor any provision for "suspension," or making a judge "non-functional," as in the case of Chief Justice Chaudhary. Why should anything different have been expected of a ruler who amended the Constitution to continue in office as President while remaining the army chief? President Musharraf restored the Constitution in 2002, but added to it the infamous Legal Framework Order to strengthen his position. Since then, Gen. Musharraf has taken many liberties with the country's basic law, and he perhaps believed that Pakistan would accept the summary treatment meted out to Mr. Chaudhary as it did his other transgressions. But people had started seeing the Supreme Court as one pillar of the state that was making an effort to regain some of the stature it lost in 2000, when it invoked the "doctrine of necessity" to endorse the Musharraf coup against the elected government of Nawaz Sharif.

Action against a chief justice was bound to provoke anger but the real difference this time was Mr. Chaudhary's decision to challenge his ouster. No other constitutional functionary has confronted President Musharraf before this. Mr. Chaudhary's resistance has given him iconic status and provided a rallying point for the continuing protests by the legal community and political parties. The charges against him have not been made public, but they are now incidental. The inescapable conclusion from his hurried ouster is that President Musharraf was worried that a chief justice gaining reputation for judicial activism and "independence" could not be trusted to serve his interests in an election year — be it on the question of his own election or on the enforced disappearance of hundreds of persons after Pakistan joined the United States in anti-terror operations. The government's actions, including the virtual house arrest of Mr. Chaudhary and his manhandling by the police, as also the attack on the office of a television channel that was providing bold coverage of the events, belie Gen. Musharraf's claim of "enlightened moderation." It is early to say if the turmoil will build up to a larger Opposition campaign for the resignation of President Musharraf and installation of an interim national government to facilitate the holding of free and fair elections. What is clear is that the entire episode has ripped off the thin veneer of democracy that Gen. Musharraf had given his regime, and reiterated that Pakistan is very much under a one-man rule.

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