guns and lawyers
In Pakistan, lawyers in business suits clashed with the police outside of the High Court in Lahore for the second day in a row. Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowds outside the building, and they responded by hurling rocks.Lawyers have been boycotting the Pakistani courts for the past several days, in response to the attempted sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. On March 9th, Chaudhry was summoned to President General Pervez Musharraf's military headquarters in Rawalpindi and asked to resign from his position. He was accused of professional misconduct and abuse of office. When he refused to resign, he was suspended from his post and confined to his home, sparking waves of protest. On the 15th, a popular nightly talk show, 'Today with Kamran Khan,' was banned by the government for criticizing Musharraf's actions.
The Chaudhry affair has become a focusing point for opposition groups. Musharraf became President in 1999, after leading a successful military coup and exiling Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He extended his presidential term by five years in 2002 with a rigged electoral referendum. He will be seeking another term later this year. And therein lies the rub: if Musharraf runs again, Pakistani law states that he must relinquish his position as General, something he is in no way prepared to do. Chaudhry had a reputation for being outspoken and willing to stand up to the government, and so his dismissal has only stoked suspicions that the country is heading for autocracy. There has been massive mobilization among all of the different oppositon groups, but there is no united front. Between Chaudhry's
dismissal and the raid on the GEO TV station, Musharraf seems to have
bungled things pretty badly and it is hard to picture this animosity
going away. Military autocracies produced by coups are notoriously unstable, and Musharraf's hold on power is tenuous and depends on walking a tight rope between the US on one side and the Taliban on the other. There are real differences between Benazir Bhutto's People's Party and Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League especially on the issues of women's rights and secularism. And neither of the two exiled leaders is an angel, but the situation bears close watching. Of course, the US takes this very seriously. We Americans have the utmost respect for the rule of law. An American president would never, say, contemplate firing all 93 US attorneys and replacing them with political hacks.
Update: Two judges resigned in protest today as protests continued in the streets.
Update: Two judges resigned in protest today as protests continued in the streets.
Poor Judgment [The Economist]
Pakistani Talk Show Banned Amid Row Over Judge [Khaleej Times]
A Storm Is Brewing [The News]
In Pictures: Lawyers' Protest [BBC News]
