World | Pakistan
Pro-Chaudhry rally turns up the heat on Musharraf
An extraordinary mass rally in support of Pakistan's suspended chief justice has ratcheted up the pressure on President General Pervez Musharraf to end nearly eight years of military rule.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 May 8, 2007
- Lawyers share sweets in Multan after the Supreme Court issued a state order suspending the proceedings of the Supreme Judicial Council.
- Image Credit: EPA
Islamabad: An extraordinary mass rally in support of Pakistan's suspended chief justice has ratcheted up the pressure on President General Pervez Musharraf to end nearly eight years of military rule.
He still appears to have the backing of fellow generals and the US, but the growing protests and a blizzard of legal challenges to his suspension of the top judge have thrown his plans for another presidential term into turmoil.
"This is a middle-class revolt for the rule of law," said Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a political analyst.
"Musharraf's options are narrowing by the day." Loyalists insist that Musharraf's March 9 decision to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was nonpolitical.
Reputation
But many observers suspect it was an attempt to remove an independent-minded judge who could obstruct the general's plans to stay in power.
Chaudhry, who became chief justice in 2005, has a reputation for challenging government actions and human rights abuses.
On Sunday, an estimated 20,000 people, most of them lawyers and opposition party supporters, gathered in downtown Lahore, Pakistan's main eastern city, to greet Chaudhry who had travelled 280 kilometres in a grand convoy from Islamabad.
After weeks of carefully avoiding comments that could be construed as political, Chaudhry declared in a speech broadcast live by private TV networks that dictatorship had had its day.
"The dictatorial system of government and the concept of concentration of power is now ended," Chaudhry said. "All these are bitter lessons of history." Railways Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmad, a close Musharraf ally, insisted the rally had no bearing on the president's future.
"There were not so many people. The media was there and gave it great projection," Ahmad said.
But some described the turnout for Chaudhry as the most significant since crowds greeted former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as she returned from exile to Lahore in 1986.
Several newspapers yesterday urged Musharraf to reinstate Chaudhry and cool the political climate ahead of parliamentary elections later this year.
Demands
They also echoed opposition demands for Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, to give up his army post before he asks lawmakers for another five-year term.
Critics say keeping both posts would breach the Constitution and are unhappy that Musharraf plans to seek a new term from the outgoing assemblies, which were chosen in flawed 2002 elections.
"The man whom the nation welcomed and whose actions it approved in the beginning is gradually losing credibility," the Daily Times newspaper said in a blistering editorial.
"His most fatal flaw has been his pretense of 'moderation' and 'enlightenment' which can no longer be disguised."
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