ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Supreme Court yesterday reinstated three judges ousted by former President Pervez Musharraf in another victory for the man set to succeed him as head of state.
Musharraf’s purge of the court last year deepened his unpopularity and helped the party of assassinated former leader Benazir Bhutto to victory in February elections.
Bhutto’s widower and political heir, Asif Ali Zardari, marshaled a coalition that forced Musharraf to quit last month. Zardari is expected to win easily when lawmakers elect a new president today.
However, the second-largest party has quit the ruling alliance because of Zardari’s refusal to restore the judges en masse — including the ousted chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.
Tassadiq Hussain Jillani, Shakirullah Jan and Syed Jamshed Ali were sworn back into the court in a solemn ceremony yesterday. Law Minister Farooq Naek said Chaudhry was also welcome to take a fresh oath, but said he could not return as chief justice because removing the judge who replaced him could trigger a “constitutional impasse.” “There cannot be two chief justices,” Naek told reporters at the court.
The move deepens the rift between Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party and that of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, now the most powerful group in the opposition. Zardari had refused calls for the government to restore the judges by arguing that it required constitutional amendments to untangle a legal mess bequeathed by Musharraf.
Naek, a People’s Party member, said the government still wanted to discuss that approach. But Zardari has been highly critical of Chaudhry, who stood up to Musharraf and questioned a pact that he signed to quash long-standing corruption charges against Zardari and his slain wife.
Zardari has accused Chaudhry of “playing politics” and called for sweeping judicial reforms expected to crimp the ability of the court to check the activities of the government.
Zardari, generally considered pro-West, isn’t expected to change Pakistan’s commitment as an ally in the US war on terrorism, despite a bold cross-border US-led raid Wednesday that left at least 15 people dead in the country’s largely lawless tribal belt along the Afghan frontier. The raid sparked widespread condemnation of what was seen as an attack on the country’s sovereignty.
Zardari has also won plaudits in the West for easing Musharraf out of office without triggering a debilitating political crisis.
Yesterday’s maneuver in the Supreme Court diminished the prospect of Musharraf being dragged through the courts on treason charges or forced into exile.
Musharraf imposed emergency rule last November in order to purge the court and halt legal challenges to his plan to stay on for another five years as president.
The judges he installed after the crackdown issued orders giving Musharraf legal protections for actions the ex-general himself admitted were unconstitutional. The government already changed a law lifting the maximum number of judges in the Supreme Court from 16 to 29 — meaning none of the judges who granted those protections will have to make way for any who return.
