KARACHI, 14 October 2003 — Some 400 Pakistani lawyers took their year-long protest against President Pervez Musharraf to the road yesterday, taking a 53-vehicle convoy on a “long march” from eastern city Lahore toward the capital.
“We are recording our protest against the non-transfer of power to the chosen (parliamentary) representatives,” Hamid Khan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), told reporters.
The lawyers are angry that General Musharraf, the army chief who seized power in a coup four years ago and made himself president in June 2001, remains in power despite the official restoration of democracy through last October’s elections.
A national and four provincial parliaments were elected 12 months ago but Musharraf has refused to step down as president, shed his army uniform or rescind sweeping powers he awarded himself two months before the 2002 polls.
Opposition parties and critics like the lawyers are furious that a general still rules Pakistan, which has been ruled by the army for 28 years of its 56-year existence.
More than 100 vehicles and five buses carrying protesting lawyers on the Grand Trunk Road highway had joined the convoy by the time it reached Waziribad, said lawyer Muzammil Shabbir Akhtar, 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Lahore.
