Leading Pakistani Parties to Form Government

Sharif and Zardari Pledge to Reinstate Judges Ousted by Musharraf

By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 10, 2008; A11

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 9 -- The heads of Pakistan's two leading political parties vowed Sunday to form a coalition government and restore the country's embattled judiciary by returning judges deposed last year to the bench within a month.

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, widower of former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, called for the country's newly elected Parliament to adopt a resolution reinstalling about 60 judges.

"The restoration of the deposed judges, as it was on the 2nd of November 2007, shall be brought about through a parliamentary resolution to be passed in the National Assembly within 30 days of the formation of the federal government," Sharif said after a marathon meeting between members of his Pakistan Muslim League faction and Zardari's Pakistan People's Party.

The announcement, at a televised news conference in the northern Punjab town of Murree, came as hundreds of lawyers protested in cities across Pakistan to mark the one-year anniversary of a decision by President Pervez Musharraf to remove the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.

Chaudhry's removal and the disbarment of dozens of other judges touched off a constitutional crisis and sparked widespread instability in the nuclear-armed nation of 164 million. The political crisis worsened considerably, however, after Musharraf on Nov. 3 declared a state of emergency and placed the chief justice and several other prominent judges and lawyers under house arrest. The next month, after the emergency was lifted, Bhutto was assassinated while campaigning.

In Islamabad, the capital, about 500 lawyers and their supporters marched Sunday to Chaudhry's home to demand an end to his four-month house arrest. Waving black flags, dozens shouted for Musharraf, the former army chief, to be hanged. Several protesters tried to cut through a barbed-wire barricade on the road near Chaudhry's home.

Hundreds of police in riot gear fired tear gas into the crowd.

"This day marks the day last year when the general thought he would get rid of the chief justice, but he was sadly mistaken," said Masood Sharif Khattak, a director of Pakistan's intelligence bureau under Bhutto who participated in the protest. "There's no way this country can move forward on any political path unless and until the judiciary is restored."

Protests for the restoration of the judiciary have become routine since Chaudhry's dismissal. On Saturday, hundreds of black-suited lawyers led by Aitzaz Ahsan, the Supreme Court bar association president, marched in a marketplace in the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi to kick off a week-long protest over the judiciary, dubbed "Black Flag Week."

Ahsan has been campaigning for the restoration of the judiciary since his release two weeks ago from months under house arrest in Lahore. The firebrand lawyer has called for the judges' immediate reinstatement through an executive order. Zardari and Sharif have called for Parliament to decide the judges' fate.

Although winners have been declared for all but a handful of seats in the 342-member National Assembly, Parliament has not yet been convened. Musharraf said Friday that he would summon the first session in two weeks.