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Pakistan lawyers plan fresh agitation for deposed judges

ISLAMABAD: Just as it appeared that Pakistan’s legal community was running out of energy to keep up an indefinite boycott of the higher courts for the reinstatement of the deposed judges, the agitation has got a second wind.

Despite their failure to convince political parties to boycott the elections on the issue of the judiciary, the agitating lawyers got a morale-booster with the decision by Pakistan People’s Party candidate Aitzaz Ahsan to withdraw his nomination for the January 8 election.

The lawyers wanted political parties to boycott the election unless the pre-November 3 judges were reinstated. Their agitation on this issue has paralysed work at the High Courts and the Supreme Court.

Mr. Ahsan led the legal battle for the ousted Chief Justice Ifthikhar Chaudhary after his first dismissal in March and was elected as the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president in October.

He has been under arrest since the imposition of Emergency rule on November 3, first in the Rawalpindi jail, and later at his Lahore home.

Mr. Ahsan, who former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently described as a “candidate of the entire nation, not just of his political party”, is set to officially withdraw his nomination papers on Saturday.

His decision to break ranks with a party that he has been associated with since the time of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto because it distanced itself from the dismissed judges’ cause, and to join hands with his legal brethren, has won him renewed admiration.

Following Mr. Ahsan’s example, a senior member of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Zafar Ali Shah, who is also a lawyer, withdrew from the electoral race on Thursday, saying he could not cut himself away from the legal community’s struggle for the judiciary in order to contest the election.

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