May 29, 2007	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 12, 1428

LAHORE, May 28: PML President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain says that early election is not a solution to the current judicial crisis and the government has no plan to go to the electorate before assemblies complete their constitutional term of five years.

Talking to Dawn on Monday, he said people calling for immediate election were in fact trying to divert attention from the real issues.

He said since President Musharraf had said it time and again that he would accept any decision given by the Supreme Court on the reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, lawyers and political parties should stop politicising the matter.

About suggestions that a roundtable conference should be called with the participation of all opposition parties to find a mechanism to steer the country out of the situation it had been facing since the filing of the reference, Mr Shujaat said that a judicial issue could not be resolved through political means.

He advised all parties to let the Supreme Court decide the matter independently.

He alleged that the lawyers' movement was aimed at mounting pressure on the apex court to give a particular kind of judgment on the reference issue or the legal fraternity would not accept it. This, he said, was not the right approach.

He said all parties should accept the judgment whatever it was.

In his opinion, the speakers' language against the army and the judiciary at a seminar at the Supreme Court building was worse than the attack on the apex court during the tenure of Nawaz Sharif.

"It's our greatness that we are tolerating all this. But there is a limit to everything."

Mr Shujaat said although there was no possibility of martial law, something more than emergency would have been proclaimed by now had there been any leader other than Gen Musharraf in the driving seat.

The well-wishers of the judiciary should not try to make the institution controversial, the ruling party president said.

He was critical of the way Mr Aitzaz Ahsan, the chief defence counsel of the CJP, was driving his client from one place to the other, and said he should be asked whether the kind of 'pick and drop' service he was providing to this client was also provided to others who engaged him and whether he charged his clients for this facility.

A former prime minister, Mr Shujaat warned that the country could be harmed if political parties and lawyers did not stop politicising the reference issue.

He refused to offer comments on CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry's remarks that centralisation of powers in one man was dangerous for the country or that the days of dictatorship and totalitarianism were over.

As for the lawyers' slogans against President Musharraf in the presence of Justice Chaudhry, the PML president said the CJP himself should take notice of it.

He said when the CJP was not making political statements, others around him should also not be allowed to use derogatory language against the president.