Courts remain deserted

Islamabad: President General Pervez Musharraf has purged the country's superior courts of judges he sees as hostile to him but the move appears to have stymied the judiciary, analysts said.

Musharraf suspended the constitution on Saturday and issued a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO), requiring judges of the Supreme Court and the high courts in the four provinces to swear allegiance to him or face dismissal.

Only four of the 17 Supreme Court justices took the oath, and a majority of high court judges refused. Legal experts say the judges' current defiance is unprecedented.

"It has never happened in the history of Pakistan that such a large number of judges refused to take an oath under a PCO," former chief justice Nasir Aslam Zahid said.

Lawyers have led protests this week and hundreds have been detained during clashes with police, while opposition parties have yet to mobilise their own street demonstrations.

The lawyers' protests had subsided by mid-week, but courts remained virtually deserted across the nation.

"We have decided not to appear before judges who took the oath under the PCO," said Gulab Shah, an official of the Lawyers Action Committee in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

"These are kangaroo courts." Few cases are being heard.

In Islamabad, the authorities placed prominent advertisements in newspapers declaring main roads leading to the Supreme Court building out of bounds.

The government is trying to fill vacancies in the superior courts, but legal experts said compliant judges would not win the respect of lawyers or a public eager for judicial independence.