June 14, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Sani 09, 1429

ISLAMABAD, June 13: A lawyer-led movement for the reinstatement of deposed judges that stormed into Islamabad on Friday made it a unique event in Pakistan’s history of people power versus a hesitant parliament.

Budget debates due to begin in both the National Assembly and the Senate on Saturday morning were bound to be overshadowed by the largest assemblage of protesting lawyers ever held in the country with tens of thousands of supporters of their cause from as diverse sections of the society as political activists, rights campaigners, ex-servicemen and retired bureaucrats — all united against President Pervez Musharraf.

Never before in nearly 61 years of Pakistan’s chequered history so many people had to come to parliament to plead for a popular because the elected representatives of the people dithered for reasons ranging from a claimed strict adherence to a constitutional path to suspected hidden compulsions that could give relief to an isolated president.

The convoys and processions of protesters from all over the country pouring into the capital even after midnight were likely to spur a debate whether parliament should act under pressure or on its own, but there have hardly been any forceful voices raised to question the right of any section of the society to exert such a pressure for its cause.

It was not immediately known how long the protesters will stay in the capital where they camped, ironically, at the same venue — near the Parliament House and the presidential palace —where President Musharraf addressed a public rally on May 12 last year that his critics interpreted as a celebration of the massacre of nearly 50 people the same day in Karachi in the early days of the 15-month-old struggle for the independence of the judiciary.

As the 342-seat National Assembly and 100-seat Senate meet simultaneously at 10am on Saturday, roars from the nearby protesters’ camp will likely divert the direction of the scheduled general debate on the budget for fiscal 2008-09.

The lawyers want that the National Assembly, or both houses of parliament, pass a resolution for the reinstatement of about 60 judges of the Supreme Court and the four provincial high courts sacked under President Musharraf’s controversial emergency proclamation of Nov 3, 2007 and that the 75-day-old government issue just an executive order to undo an illegality.

But the coalition government leader Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) says the restoration should come as part of a constitutional package it has proposed, which also seeks to clip the presidency of its controversial power to dissolve parliament, sack a prime minister and appoint armed forces chiefs and provincial governors.

But the ruling coalition lacks the required two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament to amend the Constitution.

The PPP, which leads the coalition after emerging as the largest single party in the National Assembly in the Feb 18 elections, seems to have suffered politically after its leadership failed to keep two deadlines agreed with its major coalition partner Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) to reinstate the judges through a parliamentary resolution though the main leader of the lawyers movement happened to be a PPP stalwart, Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan.

The PML-N apparently gained politically by quitting the cabinet last month and joining the lawyers’ struggle, though continuing to be part of the coalition, which also includes the Awami National Party and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam as smaller partners.

Political sources said it would amount to a legal revolution if the lawyers’ gathering succeeded in forcing a positive declaration from the government on the judges’ reinstatement and failure could mean a prolonged confrontation.