Judicial activism pushed to Emergency: Musharraf

“Pakistan is the on the verge of destabilisation” and “inaction at this time was suicide for Pakistan,” the embattled General said, speaking on the state-run TV.

The country, he said, was at a “dangerous crossroads and the time has come for making difficult decisions.”

Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless 1999 military coup, said he had seen his leadership threatened by an increasingly defiant court and rising Islamic militancy.

“Extremists are openly roaming,” he said, claiming that 61 terrorists have been freed on court orders, an apparent reference to a case that was spearheaded by now-deposed Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar M Chaudhary to press authorities over suspects held without charge by intelligence agencies.

“And no one knows whether any of the these freed men were behind recent bomb attacks,” Musharraf said, adding the “government system in my view, is in semi-paralysis as all government functionaries are insulted by courts and law enforcing agencies punished by the judiciary, demoralizing them.”