RAWALPINDI: The long march came to a full stop early Saturday morning in Islamabad without staging the much expected sit-in till the reinstatement of the deposed judges.
The expectations of a long sit-in were raised by repeated statements made by the leaders of lawyers during the course of the long march.
Lawyers’ leader Aitzaz Ahsan, who led the long march, took great pains to justify the wrapping up of the long march during his address to the mammoth rally in the capital and in his subsequent interviews to private TV channels and newspapers.
He highlighted the resource constraints the Supreme Court Bar Association was facing and the need for maintaining the peaceful nature of the long march.
He said he and his colleagues could not be bought and diverted from their mission by anyone.
He said when he was fighting the case of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in the Supreme Court, President Musharraf had offered him everything. He said prime minister Shaukat Aziz could have been changed in 15 minutes. However, he stood his ground and won the case. He said he gave up the Lahore and Pindi seats, which he was certain to secure, for the cause of the lawyers’ movement. He asked how he could ever think of ditching or damaging this movement.
A small number of participants of the huge rally pressed for the sit-in. Another small group of participants tried to break the police cordon and reach the Presidency.
However, Aitzaz succeeded in keeping the tempers down and concluding the remarkable anti-Musharraf show peacefully.
Khalid Iqbal adds: Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan said they did not want confrontation between the participants of the long march and the administration in front of the Parliament House and, therefore, it was decided to postpone the planned sit-in.
Talking to The News here on Saturday, he said there were five hundred thousand participants, including women and children, in the long march, who gathered in front of the Parliament House but due to lack of resources, they could not afford staging a sit-in there.
He said only 200 lawyers out of thousands of their colleagues insisted on staging a sit-in on the occasion.
“However, I did not stop anyone from staging dharna and those who wanted to do so were free,” he said.
Aitzaz said he stopped a confrontation between the administration and the long march participants because he did not want to see bloodshed of innocent people.
He said it was totally wrong that he was following some hidden agenda. “I want to save the country through peace and love and all the deposed judges, including chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, would be reinstated with full respect and honour through the slogans ëHum Mulk Bachanay Niklay Hain, Aao Hamaray Sath Challoí, he added.
APP adds from Islamabad: Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Aitzaz Ahsan has said that no nation can progress without a free judiciary, as both are inter-linked.
Addressing a mammoth gathering of the long march participants here on Saturday, he said that the restoration of the judiciary was imperative for the progress and prosperity of the country.
He said the lawyers and the civil societyís struggle was not only for the restoration of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and other judges of the superior courts but also to change the system, adding that their struggle would continue till the achievement of the objectives and provision of justice to the people.
“Today is a historic day as five hundred thousand people belonging to all walks of life have gathered here for the independence of the judiciary and I salute them,” Aitzaz said.
He told the lawyers that he and his colleagues would not disappoint them in this hour of trial. “We had started the struggle for the restoration of the judiciary with a cause and this struggle will continue till the achievement of the cause,” he added.
He criticised the ban on two programmes of Geo TV. He said these programmes were imparting education to people.
Former president Supreme Court Bar Association Munir A Malik said the reason behind the success of the long march was unity in the ranks of the lawyersí community and leadership qualities. He said that hundreds of thousands of people had participated in the long march and it gave a new message to parliament that today people were aware and they knew their rights.
“The people have started a war for their rights and they will win it,” he said and added they would again and again march on Islamabad in discipline, as proven on Friday and would not become a part of any adventurism.
Member SCBA Hamid Khan said the mammoth gathering gave the verdict that the judges would be restored and there was no room for any dictator in the country.
He said the constitutional package could not block the way of the constitutional judges. He hoped that the judiciary would be restored to the October 12, 1999 position.
He also rejected the increase in the number of the Supreme Court judges and said that they did not accept the PCO judges.
President Balochistan High Court Bar Association Baz Mohammad Khan Kakar, President Sindh High Court Bar Association Rashid A Razvi and other lawyers also spoke on the occasion.
