LAHORE, June 10: The Supreme Court Bar Association on Monday termed President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s appearance in military uniform at the Lahore Bar Association’s gathering on June 8 an insult to the legal fraternity.

SCBA President Hamid Khan and other members of the lawyers’ Joint Action Committee said at a press conference the president should have attended the ceremony in the civilian dress. “The president has abused our profession and its dignity by attending the function in uniform,” the SCBA president said.

While reacting to the ceremony, he claimed that the invitation to Gen Musharraf by the country’s one district bar was not good enough for the government to win the lawyers’ support. He tagged the ceremony a ‘hollow show’ on part of the law officers and those attending it for conveying a false notion that the lawyers were supporting Gen Musharraf.

“All they needed was a platform of any district bar association to be used for creating certain false notions, and the LBA availed itself of this opportunity after betraying the legal fraternity,” Mr Khan said. He claimed that the gathering was without the mainstream lawyers’ bodies like the SCBA and the Pakistan Bar Council, which participated actively in the lawyers’ convention held in Islamabad on June 9.

He said LBA President Mansoorur Rahman Khan Afridi, after being suspended from his office, did not have the mandate to hold the ceremony, and the appeal against his suspension was maintainable only before the PBC. He added that the LHC did not have the authority to reverse the suspension orders. “The judiciary should not have interfered in this matter,” he said.

LAWYERS’ CONVENTION: The SCBA flayed the government’s interference by stopping the JAC from executing its direct action against the superior courts’ judges on the Supreme Court’s building in Islamabad.