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Chaudhary for justice at people’s doorsteps

ISLAMABAD: Thousands of lawyers left Multan in southern Punjab on Wednesday in a long motorcade towards Lahore from where they will march on the capital on Thursday to press Parliament for the reinstatement of the judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf last year.

Addressing the lawyers in Multan, deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary said all he had wanted was “to deliver justice to people at their doorstep”.

Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan said the rally would head to the National Assembly and not General (retired) Musharraf’s Army House residence in Rawalpindi.

Without directly criticising the PPP-led government for its failure to restore the judges, Mr. Ahsan, who is also a prominent PPP leader, said it was Parliament that had become a hurdle in the quick resolution of the issue, and not General Musharraf, who he described as “too weak” to play any role.

The rally is expected to reach the capital only by the early hours of Friday. Police are expecting at least 2,00,000 participants, with the Pakistan Muslim League (N) throwing its weight behind the rally.

Back from a short trip to London on Wednesday, the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif’s first task was to brush away speculation that he was distancing himself from the lawyers’ movement for the restoration of the judiciary.

Mr. Sharif told journalists on his arrival that his party “fully backs” the lawyers struggle and that he had rushed back from London, where his wife Kulsoom his recuperating from an illness, to participate in the march.

The PML(N) leader will address the lawyers at Lahore’s Data Darbar.

“I appeal to the entire nation to take part in the march. It is a national duty for everyone who wants to see an end to dictatorship in Pakistan, who wants to see the rule of law, the flourishing of democracy and institutions, who wants to see an independent judiciary,” Mr. Sharif said.

The restoration of the judges was not his personal battle, Mr Sharif said, nor even his party’s, nor the lawyers.’ “This is a battle for the survival of Pakistan,” he said.

After media criticism over the sealing of roads in the capital with 40-feet container trucks in anticipation of the “long march” and comparisons with the previous regime, which similarly sealed off Karachi and the capital against protesters in May 2007, the government moved hastily and removed them on Wednesday on the reported orders of PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari.

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