ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: Supreme Court Bar Association president Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan has asked lawyers who are waging a struggle for restoration of the pre-emergency judiciary to campaign for binding the candidates, if all major parties decide to contest the elections, to an oath that they would work for the cause of the judiciary if elected.

“We must have a strategy to use the momentum to our own advantage. Otherwise our demand may go onto the back-burner and local issues of roads, water, sewerage, schools and other services may engage the people in the hustle and bustle of the nationwide election campaign,” he warned.

“As I write this from a sub-Jail, let me tell you how proud I am of each one of you and of myself to be part of the community that is writing the present chapter in the history of our unfortunate country,” Barrister Ahsan said in a letter to lawyers, urging them to keep the demand for restoring the deposed judges alive.

He proposed that the SCBA should prescribe an oath to be signed by all candidates before news television cameras at the offices of bar associations across the country.

“The oath should require from each deponent to swear that, if elected, he or she would move, pursue and vote for a motion, resolution, law or amendment ensuring restoration of the ‘ousted’ judges. The oath papers should be preserved and widely publicised by the bars in the media to tell the electorate that only those who had taken the oath were ‘pre-qualified candidates’.

“Those who avoid taking the oath should not be approved by the bar as deserving votes of the people, irrespective of their parties.

“However, oath alone is not enough. The SCBA and the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) should ensure that all oath-taking ceremonies are held in the premises of the district bar associations before the general house to be taken by a senior office-bearer in the presence of the media. The names of pre-qualified candidates should be announced to the press at the district and central levels.

“Keeping members involved in this most engaging activity will also make the boycott of the courts (wherever prescribed) more viable and effective for a longer period,” he said.

“Since all this activity will be within the premises of the bars, the activity would entirely be lawful and sustainable, yet it would become the most prominent activity in public eye, nationally and internationally.”

He stressed that “a synchronised nationwide activity, with the bars playing the lead role while highlighting the primary demand, would help create a large lobby (perhaps even a majority) committed to the major demand as we begin to ride the ‘judicial bus’ that may yet be necessary by late January 2008.

“We have a nationwide network of district bars and we can make it worth their while for candidates to adhere to our aspiration of restoration of judges,” he said.

This would also keep the issue of the ‘deposed’ judges right up-front making it an inescapable electoral issue, he said.