LONDON, March 14: Reminding President Musharraf that good generals know when to retreat, the London Times in its editorial on Wednesday advised him to ‘reinstate’ Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry unless, as it said, the case against Mr Chaudhry is far more damning than anything said by the government has yet suggested.

Pakistan today is literally without the rule of law as protesting judges are refusing to sit, and barristers will not plead cases, regrets the editorial headlined ‘Judicial Error’.

Noting that the government stood accused on all sides of trampling on the independence of the judiciary, the editorial has expressed abhorrence over government’s attempts to keep the chief justice under virtual house arrest until yesterday, when it said he appeared before the Supreme Judicial Council and issued a blistering attack on the president, accusing him of violating the Constitution as well as his personal liberty.

According to the Times, Mr Chaudhry is respected both as a reformer who has dramatically cut the backlog of cases pending before the Supreme Court and as a champion of human rights who has energetically taken up cases of terrorism suspects who have ‘disappeared’ in police or intelligence custody.

It dismissed government’s attempts to deny any political motive as ‘useless’ and said its action is almost universally seen as an attempt to tame the judiciary before elections this year under rules that are expected to come under legal challenge.