LAHORE, April 27: With just three days remaining before the parliamentary deadline to restore deposed judges expires, hundreds of people took to the street here on Sunday to demonstrate their support for an independent judiciary and to urge coalition parties to honour the Murree Declaration.

They later called on deposed Supreme Court Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday and ended their protest outside the Governor’s House on The Mall.

Starting out in front of the Racecourse Park at 5pm, the people, of all ages and from all walks of life, chanted slogans against President Musharraf and for the restoration of the judiciary. They were also shouting “Minus-one formula na manzoor” in reference to mooted plans to restore all Supreme Court judges except Chief Justice Ifthikar Muhammad Chaudhry. They carried national flags, pictures of the deposed CJ, and banners saying “Zardari fulfill Mohtarma Benazir’s promise” and “Musharraf we hate you”. Starting out as a few dozen, their numbers later swelled to around 200 as PML-N and PTI activists joined them.

Hamid Zaman, a representative of the Concerned Citizens for Pakistan (CCP), who helped organise the rally, told Dawn: “We reject any constitutional package and hope that the PML-N, the APDM and lawyers will be with us in case the judges are not restored. In that case we will keep protesting and await the lawyers’ decision to be taken on May 3 regarding future action.”

He said the people had not wanted to place undue pressure on the parliament but now was the time that it must honour its pledges.

The protesters received messages of solidarity from members of the public passing by, as Justice Nasira Iqbal (retired), a former judge of the Lahore High Court, personally handed out flyers and poetry to people driving by in cars, traveling by rickshaws and riding bikes.

As emotions among the protesters continued to run high, they decided to walk to the deposed Justice Ramday’s house a few minutes away in GOR. Justice Ramday, who was just leaving his house at the time to take his evening walk, told the protestors: “Your coming today here is a pleasant surprise for me. I was leaving for a walk and the first thing that came to my mind was that if it wasn’t for all of you, your sacrifices, struggle and efforts for the last four or five months, I would not be free today to leave my house.”

To great applause, he told the protesters that the role of civil society must not end with the restoration of judges and that everyone must continue to act as watchdog in order to safeguard basic rights. He stressed: “This struggle is not about getting people their jobs back, it is about restoring the peoples’ rights.”

The demonstration ended about two hours after it first began with a rendition of the national anthem.