On the call of Islamabad High Court Bar Association (IHCBA) and Lahore High Court Bar Association (LHCBA), Rawalpindi Bench, the lawyers of the twin cities will assemble outside the Supreme Court building today (Monday) to express solidarity with the independent judiciary and express their resolve to resist any move by the government to disobey the court orders.
According to the lawyers’ leaders, the move would be second phase of their struggle aimed at making the government implement the Supreme Court orders. Talking to Pakistan Today on Sunday, IHCBA President Chaudhry Muhammad Ashraf Gujjar said it was mandatory for the government to implement the apex court’s decisions under the constitution. He warned to hold to stage protests in front of the Parliament House and the Prime Minister’s Secretariat if the government failed to execute the directives.
Gujjar said lawyers would pass a resolution condemning the attitude of the federal government towards the decisions of the apex court, adding that they would not accept any hurdle in implementation of the SC orders as the independence of judiciary was achieved after a long and, what he called, bloody struggle. LHCBA Rawalpindi Bench President Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui said the bar would hold a lawyers convention in Rawalpindi on September 24 to discuss the situation.
He said the government was apprehensive of the expected verdicts in important cases of corruption involving some top personalities; therefore, it was trying to malign the judiciary which would not be tolerated by the lawyers’ community. It may be mentioned that the Supreme Court, while showing extreme restraint, has thrown the ball back into the government’s court on the issue of the transfer of Sohail Ahmed who was demoted from the powerful post of Establishment Division secretary to that of an officer on special duty.
The apex court accepted the request by the government to give more time to deliberate on the matter. The attorney general called the order ‘a great’ one, saying it would go a long way in defining judicial and executive domains and ensuring harmony and complementarity.
