20 March 2004	Saturday	28 Muharram 1425

LAHORE, March 19: The all-Pakistan representative convention of lawyers, scheduled to be held here on Saturday, is likely to continue a hardline policy and resume the legal community's campaign with the same spirit under which it began upon the promulgation of the Legal Framework Order in August 2002.

The Pakistan Bar Council and the Lawyers Joint Action Committee have jointly issued the call for the convention, which is set to give a fresh mandate to the representatives of the provincial bar councils, bar associations of high courts in all the four provinces and major cities like Karachi, Quetta, Peshawar and Lahore.

In all likelihood, the national lawyers convention will take a decision on resuming a series of long marches in Islamabad, picking up the thread where it was left in November 2003, when the previous bar leadership staged such a march from Peshawar to Islamabad.

The LJAC reviewed the arrangements for the convention at a meeting on Friday with Qazi Muhammad Anwar, PBC vice-chairperson, in the chair. PBC's executive committee chairperson Kazim Khan, Supreme Court Bar Association President Tariq Mahmood, vice-president Chaudhry Muhammad Ikram, Lahore High Court Bar Association President Ahmad Awais, former SCBA president Hamid Khan and former LHCBA president Hafiz Abdur Rehman Ansari were prominent among the participants in the meeting.

The LJAC also planned a number of resolutions to be tabled before the convention, which will begin at 10am at the Karachi Hall of the LHCBA. According to a source, representatives of the Sindh Bar Council, the Sindh High Court Bar Association, the Karachi Bar Association, the NWFP Bar Council, the Peshawar High Court Bar Association, the Balochistan Bar Council and the Punjab Bar Council have confirmed their participation in the convention, which will be presided over by the PBC vice-chairperson.

The lawyers, the source said, did not feel like calling off their campaign because no steps had been taken to restore the constitution as it stood on Oct 12, 1999, there was no rule of law and national institutions were in jeopardy.

Besides, the judiciary was far from being independent and a future adventurism in blocking a smooth political process and democratic dispensation could not be ruled out, the source added.