Pakistan lawyers plan rally on March 9

Lahore: Estranged leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and leading light of lawyers' movement Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan has said he would continue to support the cause of independent judiciary whether others like it or not.

Addressing a press conference at the Punjab Bar Council yesterday, Aitzaz said that lawyers, political parties and civil society of Lahore will host a reception when the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry arrives in Lahore to address a lawyers convention.

This will be the third visit of the deposed chief justice to Lahore ever since the lawyers' movement started in March 2007.

The lawyers are planning another long march onto Islamabad on March 9. "All the political parties and civil society will take part in the march and whenever government tried to stop us we'll stage a sit-in there," said Aitzaz.

"I don't have a slightest doubt in my mind that this long march will be bigger than the previous one," said Aitzaz referring to lawyers' long march last year when about 200,000 people gathered in Islamabad to demand the reinstatement of the deposed chief justice.

"The restoration and independence of judiciary is my cause and I'll continue to pursue this," said Aitzaz who is out of favour from his party leadership due to his role in the lawyers' movement.

Meanwhile, Ahsan in an interview to a journalist which is published in a form of book recently, has said that former president Pervez Musharraf had offered him prime ministership.

"Principal Secretary to Musharraf Tariq Aziz had offered me the prime ministership if I disowned the lawyers' movement. But I had refused. I was told that if I say yes, within 10 minutes I could see the news of resignation of the then sitting prime minister Shaukat Aziz on TV channels," Aitzaz told the writer.

Ahsan said it was beyond comprehension why Zardari was against the restoration of the deposed chief justice.

"In the presence of National Reconciliation Order (NRO) President Zardari has nothing to fear from Justice Chaudhry," the book said quoting Ahsan.

He told the writer that November 3 decision to impose emergency by former Musharraf had the tacit approval of the US administration.

Ahsan also came down hard on the proposed new appointments of the judges in the high courts. The names doing the rounds in the media are of all those people who are either party workers themselves or relatives of the party workers.