Sacked judges’ restoration: Over 100 MNAs to join march on Islamabad: Aitzaz

Sacked judges’ restoration: Over 100 MNAs to join march on Islamabad: Aitzaz
* SCBA president says ex-judges Tarar, Saeeduz Zaman, Wajihuddin, Fakhruddin and Munir Sheikh will also participate in protest
By Zulfiqar Ghuman, Daily Times, February 20, 2008

ISLAMABAD: Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan is opposed to accepting anything short of the sacked judges’ restoration and has begun contacting like-minded political parties to rally support for this purpose.

Aitzaz told Daily Times on Wednesday that over 100 newly elected members of the National Assembly, mainly belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, political activists, civil society representatives, lawyers and retired and sacked judges would demonstrate outside the parliament building on March 9, if President Pervez Musharraf’s November 3 acts were not reversed.

He has already announced a lawyers’ long march on Islamabad from Lahore on March 9, the day marking the first sacking of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry by the president.

Aitzaz said retired judges including Rafiq Tarar, Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui, Wajihuddin Ahmed, Fakhruddin G Ebrahim and Munir A Sheikh along with sacked judges would participate in the march to express solidarity with the sacked judges and push the new government to restore them for installing an independent judiciary.

He said leaders of many political parties supporting the sacked judges’ restoration had assured him that they would march along lawyers and judges on the GT Road for the restoration of superior judiciary to its pre-November 3 status.

The SCBA president said ex-judges and lawyers from Karachi would also join the march on March 9 while a procession of retired and sacked judges, and lawyers would reach the capital directly from Peshawar.