Pakistan's Supreme Court reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar
Chaudhry in an historic ruling on Friday.
"The reference has been set aside and the chief justice has been
reinstated," Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, the head of the
13-member bench, said at the end of the two-month-old case.
President Pervez Musharraf suspended the country's top judge
four months earlier, which sparked a nationwide lawyers' movement
to defend the judiciary's independence and handed opposition
parties a hot issue in an election year.
On a number of occasions pro-Chaudhry protests have turned
violent. At an attempt to address a rally of lawyers in Karachi on
May 12 about 40 people were killed when pro-government activists
clashed with opposition supporters hoping to welcome Chaudhry to
the city.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who hopes to return from
self-exiled for elections and has held talks with Musharraf's
emissaries over a possible deal, said the ruling could calm down
Pakistan's political scene.
"I welcome the development of this restoration of the chief
justice ... this will help defuse some of the frustrations but not
all of the frustrations," she told journalists in London.
The charges against Chaudhry included using influence to get his
son a job, fiddling petrol expenses and that he had a penchant for
expensive cars.
The government filed a statement in the court last month in
which it also accused Chaudhry of harassing judges, showing bias in
appointments and intimidating police and civil servants.
Musharraf had earlier said he would accept whatever decision the
court reached regarding Chaudhry, and his Prime Minister Shaukat
Aziz issued a statement saying much the same.
"I would like to emphasize that we must all accept the verdict
with grace and dignity reflective of a mature nation.
"This is not the time to claim victory or defeat. The
constitution and the law have prevailed and must prevail at all
times," Aziz said.
Political analyst and newspaper columnist Ayaz Amir said the
rare decision against the government showed Pakistan possessed the
strongest Supreme Court in its history.
(China Daily via agencies July 21, 2007)
