Pakistan: Minister Details Government Plans in Judicial Row

Text of report by Pakistani newspaper The News website on 24 March

[Report by Tariq Butt: "Govt strives to save face over reference"]

ISLAMABAD: The government has firmed up a three-pronged strategy to preclude more damage to be inflicted by the ill-advised presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

“We set a lofty goal without specifying the nuts and bolts of how it is to be achieved,” a federal minister, who disapproves the move against the chief judge, told this correspondent on condition of anonymity.

Barring a few exceptions, all ministers and ministers of state are totally indisposed to saying anything on the record.

“Ironically, after we were confronted with unparalleled offensive reaction, we started to chalk out a cogent strategy to come out of the predicament without being further scathed,” the minister said.

One element of the official strategy is to fight a concerted battle in the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) by engaging more leading lawyers to assist Attorney General of Pakistan Makhdoom Ali Khan.

Sharifuddin Pirzada, who has a mutually respectful relationship with Justice Chaudhry, continues to be saying no to joining the bandwagon of the government’s team of lawyers.

“I think he will be assisting us in the background,” another minister said. “For obvious reasons, Pirzada would not like to see President General Pervez Musharraf constantly mired in the judicial crisis of the highest degree.”

The second part of the strategy is to politically respond to the supporters, among the legal community and political parties, of Justice Chaudhry, who, the government believes, are out to cash in on the situation. Side by side, it will try to mobilize lawyers, backing it, so that they give the impression of a division in their community.

At the same time, the minister said, the government would not deal with the protests in Justice Chaudhry’s favour sternly. “There will be a more visible difference in our approach to future protests unless there is huge provocation to use force.

The two-week adjournment of the reference has already provided us breathing space and dampened the protests to some extent.”

Yet another minister said that Justice Chaudhry was unlikely to go public about his case very much because he knows that by talking too much, too often, he would be spoiling his own defence within the SJC.

Till April 3, the next date of hearing of the SJC, Justice Chaudhry plans to address a couple of bar associations. He is unlikely to deliver such speeches to many bar bodies.

The third element of the official policy is the exit strategy if the government finally reads during the SJC proceedings that it is going to lose.

“No doubt, Justice Chaudhry’s reinstatement as chief judge is an unthinkable but nightmarish scenario that Musharraf would not like to see,” the minister said.

“He would like to have a rapprochement before such nightmare strikes him.”

A predominant majority of the ministers, who came to know about the reference only after the media broke the news, feels that the government has been cornered and lost comprehensively in the election year.

They don’t see the situation turning out to be in their favour in the near future and are scary about further fallout if the proceedings at the SJC lasted for months.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.