After Musharraf’s Resignation, What’s Next for Pakistan’s Judiciary?

[WSJ_law_blog]

Last month, the Law Blog attended a gathering of the New York City Bar Association to listen to an address by Aitzaz Ahsan, a 2007 Law Blog Lawyer of the Day. Among Mr. Ahsan’s other distinctions: He’s the president of Pakistan’s Supreme Court Bar Association, and the leader of that country’s “lawyers’ movement,” an organization calling for the reinstatement of about 60 judges removed last year by President Pervez Musharraf.



Pakistan’s suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, right, leaves the Supreme Court with his attorney Aitzaz Ahsan in Islamabad, Pakistan, May 3, 2007. (AP Photo/B.K.Bangash)

“The most effective weapon against terror, is the broad mass of people of a given country who have enforceable rights,” said Ahsan at the NYCBA gathering, explaining that Pakistan could not move forward until it regained an independent judiciary. “You deprive them of enforceable rights, and you deprive them of recourse to justice, and they will fall into the more corrupt, criminal justice that the extremists are ready to provide.” At the time, Ahsan called for Musharraf’s resignation, branding him the most “unpopular” and “hated” man in Pakistan, and said that the delay in reinstating the judges was “purposefully being sanctioned and supported” by the Bush administration through its continued support of Musharraf.

Today, Ahsan got his wish. Musharraf resigned. “Please accept this decision,” he said in a one-hour televised address. “I am not thinking on personal levels, but Pakistan first. Take care of Pakistan.” Here are reports from the WSJ and the NYT.

Ahsan told the NYT that the resignation was a cause “to rejoice.” As for the future of the judges, Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister who was deposed by Musharraf in 1999, has insisted on the reinstatement of the 57 supreme and high court judges, including the chief justice. Sharif co-leads the governing coalition that engineered Musharraf’s ouster. The other co-leader, Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister who was assassinated in December, believes that judges appointed during the emergency should also be retained.