Pakistan Reinstates 3 Judges Dumped by Musharraf
One day before the presidential elections in Pakistan, the country’s Supreme Court reinstated three judges ousted by Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf’s decision to force the three judges out of office caused him to lose support ‘and helped his political foes to a victory in February elections.’ In the end, he resigned under pressure.
The debate about whether not all judges fired by Musharraf should be reinstated cause a tremendous controversy in Pakistan under the ruling coalition parties. The second largest party left the coalition because the other parties would not agree to let chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry return to the country’s highest court.
Today, three of the judges, but not Chaudhry, were reinstated; ‘Tassadiq Hussain Jillani, Shakirullah Jan and Syed Jamshed Ali were sworn back into the court at a ceremony Friday.’
Chaudhry could not return (yet) because, in the words of Law Minister Farooq Naek ‘removing the judge who replaced him could trigger a “constitutional impasse.”‘
“There cannot be two chief justices,” Naek told reporters at the court.
Asif Ali Zardari, the front-runner to become president in a vote by lawmakers on Saturday and leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, countered calls to reinstate all the judges, including Chaudhry, by saying that doing so would require constitutional amendments. Additionally, Zardari is not a fan of Chaudhry because the latter ‘stood up to Musharraf and questioned a pact signed by the former military ruler that quashed long-standing corruption charges against Zardari and his slain wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.’
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, on the other hand, wants to see Chaudhry go back to the office he held for years. He argues that the government could reinstate all judges ‘through a simple order. Pervaiz Rashid, a Sharif aide, said the return of the three judges on Friday amounted to validating Musharraf’s crackdown.’
“Whether they restore three or 300 judges, the way they are doing it, it doesn’t change our stand,” he said. “We do not believe in any judiciary without the reinstatement of Justice Chaudhry.”
This means that today’s development will deepen the rift between Pakistan’s two leading parties will increase. They were not able to get along for quite some weeks already. The two parties disagree tremendously about the future of the country, and the right approach and, not unimportant in Pakistan, the leaders of all parties carry quite some dirt with them and are power hungry.
*Edited at 6:22 PM ET; changed title to accurately reflect the content of the story.
I think the title is a typo…. it is at least confusing. Also I’m a bit confused by the logic behind not reinstating the chief justice…. but that’s not Michael’s problem =) Is the new chief justice very well liked? or politically connected to the parties that don’t want him to go back to just being a normal judge?