LAHORE, Sept 22: The Joint Action Committee of lawyers on Monday declared the government’s proposed constitutional package “a sordid attempt to deceive the people of the country.”

The lawyers also said it was merely a replica of the Legal Framework Order, announcing that they would hold the Lahore-Islamabad long march on Oct 13 against the issue. The representatives of the Pakistan Bar Council, Supreme Court Bar Association and the Lahore High Court Bar Association expressed fear that President Gen Pervez Musharraf might not shed his uniform.

“It is clear that Gen Musharraf doesn’t want to get his actions validated in a constitutional way, but wants to stick to the controversial LFO. The latest constitutional package is meant to hoodwink the nation,” alleged SCBA President Hamid Khan at a news conference.

He also accused Musharraf of foiling all the government-opposition parleys on the LFO, saying, “the general did not want to quit the power and wanted to protect his reign at the expense of the 1973 Constitution for which he has no respect.”

Mr Khan also alleged that the president wanted to keep parliament subservient to his “undemocratic designs.”

“We remind the opposition leaders of the 14-point declaration announced by the lawyers and the heads of different political parties in which the LFO had been condemned. The only solution is to stick to that declaration and refuse to bow before a dictator,” he said.

Pakistan Bar Council’s executive committee chairman Kazim Khan said Gen Musharraf had been using certain “dummy figures” for holding parleys with the opposition on the LFO. He said the lawyers would not trust the president, who had lost his credibility for taking extra-constitutional steps.

India, he said, had refused to hold talks with the general and also declined giving visa to the Pakistan’s foreign minister for New Delhi.

LHCBA President Hafiz Abdul Rahman Ansari endorsed Mr Khan’s views on the proposed constitutional package, saying the lawyers would oppose the set-up in which not even the prime minister had any authority to negotiate with the opposition leaders.

“We have no objection to parliament’s life-time extension to the tenures of the superior court judges, but granting even a day’s extension by a dictator is not acceptable,” Mr Ansari said, reaffirming the lawyers pledge to continue their struggle till Gen Musharraf’s stepping down.