Lawyers' movement gets a jolt

Critics say by reinstating less controversial judges, Zardari is trying to consolidate power as president and chief of ruling PPP.

Asif Ali Zardari, right, greets his former coalition partner Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad yesterday.

ISLAMABAD // When Asif Ali Zardari is sworn in as Pakistan's president today, it will be by the chief justice who was hand-picked by his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf - a slap in the face to the lawyers' movement that has campaigned to restore the original judiciary fired by Mr Musharraf.

Mr Zardari has already managed to undermine the pro-judiciary cause by reinstating many of the less controversial judges, thereby splitting the movement. More than a dozen of the 60 judges removed by Mr Musharraf in November last year have been brought back to the high courts or the Supreme Court, with more due to be reappointed this week. Mr Zardari spent his first five months in government - as co-chairman of the major coalition power - prevaricating over the issue, but since his election as president last Saturday he has now tackled it through a piecemeal solution - reappointing some of the less contentious judges. His intention seems to be to isolate Iftikhar Chaudhry, the former chief justice, and those judges closest to him.

In this way, critics say, Mr Zardari will have created a tame judiciary, which will bolster his already formidable power as president and also chief of the ruling Pakistan People's Party. "This is an assault on the independence of the judiciary. You cannot pick and choose the judges. All judges must be restored unconditionally, without any choice," said Ahsan Iqbal, a senior member of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, which left the coalition over the issue and is now the biggest element of the opposition.

The big problem for the PPP is Mr Chaudhry himself, who the party privately regards as having become politicised and partisan on the side of Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N leader, who has championed him. Furthermore, when he was chief justice, he was an activist and populist judge, who challenged several of Mr Musharraf's policies on legal grounds. Realpolitik means that no government wants an awkward judiciary, not least one headed by Mr Zardari, who has himself benefited from a highly criticised legal amnesty for corruption charges.

The PPP was so determined not to take Mr Chaudhry back that it was willing to lose Mr Sharif's party from the coalition. For many lawyers, it was all or nothing. Others take a more pragmatic view. "They [the PPP] are really not handling this whole issue with grace," said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, a think tank based in Islamabad.

"But I still feel that, if the judges are being reinstated, and their seniority is being respected, it's still a better option than not having those judges at all." Mr Musharraf first tried to remove Mr Chaudhry in March last year, spawning a unique movement by Pakistan's lawyers who rallied to support the independence of the judiciary. Black-suited lawyers became the vanguard of the resistance to Mr Musharraf's rule, fighting pitched battles with the police. That confrontation was, in large measure, the beginning of the end for the president, who came under such pressure that he later held free elections that brought to power his political enemies.

For the first time in Pakistan's torturous constitutional history, a chief justice refused to bow to a sitting army chief, as Mr Musharraf was then still in uniform, and for that act of bravery, Mr Chaudhry became and remains a hero of the lawyers' movement. The partial restoration of judges will certainly weaken the lawyers, but for the hard-core activists, only Mr Chaudhry's reinstatement will do.

"I don't think the fact that some people have gone back to the bench takes away from the intensity of the movement. Because remember, the symbol is the chief justice. They can't just brush it aside," said Muneer Malik, one of the leaders of the lawyers' movement. Mr Zardari has more plans to make sure that the judiciary will not give him trouble. His PPP has prepared a "constitutional package" that will clip the powers of the judges and which means, according to Mr Malik, that "you can kiss goodbye to an independent judiciary".

But the lawyers are not finished. Seeing some of the judges restored, they now feel that they can pursue their cause through the courts. That will create new headaches for the government. The judges who find themselves back in court may yet have to choose between their jobs and the cause of judicial independence. [e-mail]