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“Restore ousted judges or face more agitation”

ISLAMABAD: Aitizaz Ahsan, the president of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Associaition, who got a three-day reprieve from house arrest on Thursday for Id, has given an ultimatum to the new parliament that will be elected on January 8 – take steps for the restoration of the ousted judges of the Supreme Court or face up to a more vigorous agitation by the country’s lawyers.

“We will give the new Parliament a couple of weeks. This time, there are thousands willing to drive these judges, and we will go to all the bar associations in the country,” he said, alluding to his own role as ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary’s driver as they led a cross-country campaign to mobilise the legal community after President Pervez Musharraf’s March 9 attempt to remove him.

This time, Mr. Ahsan said, it would be a “judicial bus” carrying 45 former judges and the ousted Chief Justice.

Mr. Ahsan, who was a candidate of the Pakistan People’s Party in the January 8 election until he withdrew from the race to throw his weight behind the campaign for the restoration of the ousted judiciary, said the lawyers were “determined” to achieve their objective.

Speaking to Dawn News and other television channels after his release in Lahore, he said the lawyers were also campaigning for the full restoration of the Constitution, “as it was before November 2,” before the imposition of the Emergency.

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