ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: The representatives of the lawyers on Monday said Gen Pervez Musharraf was not the constitutional president of the country and demanded that the judges of the superior courts should take fresh oath of office.
The lawyers who held a 'long march' from Peshawar to Islamabad, held a convention at the bar offices in the Supreme Court building, said the judiciary of the country should learn from history. They said all the military rulers, after using the judges, discarded them at later stages.
The lawyers said their protest against the passage of 17th Amendment would continue as it has changed the basic structure of the Constitution. Gen Pervez Musharraf was not the elected president. They pledged that the lawyers would continue their struggle for his removal from the office of president.
Tariq Mehmood, President of SCBC, Qazi Anwar, Vice chairman of Pakistan Bar Council, Hamid Khan, member Pakistan Bar Council, Chaudhry Mohammad Ikram, Vice President of SCBA, and other office bearers from different parts of the country addressed the lawyers' convention.
In a resolution passed by the convention the lawyers rejected the 17th Constitutional Amendment for having been adopted on the presumption that Legal Framework Order (LFO) 2002 was part of the Constitution.
The lawyers stated that no individual had the power to amend the constitution and the Supreme Court could neither itself nor can authorize any one else to amend the Constitution.
They also rejected discretionary powers of the President to dissolve National and Provincial Assemblies under Article 58 (2) (b) and 112 (2) (b) respectively as destructive of the federal parliamentary system and violative of the basic structure and features of the Constitution.
The convention demanded that there should be no reduction in the number of judges of the Supreme Court, that all vacancies in the superior courts should be filled forthwith and all appointments to the Supreme Court and the Chief Justices of High Courts be made on the principle of seniority.
