Pakistan’s deposed Chief Justice claimed on Tuesday that he was still the legal head of the Supreme Court and hailed the election defeat of President Pervez Musharraf’s allies as the end of “one-man rule”.Pakistan’s new government has pledged to reinstate within a month about 60 senior judges purged by Musharraf last year, raising the prospect of a showdown with the US-backed president.In his first set-piece speech since his release from house arrest last week, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry insisted his removal during a burst of emergency rule in November was illegal. The judges who refused to swear a fresh oath of office during the emergency “claim that we are all the judges of the courts, and those people who took the oath . are not legal and constitutional judges,” Chaudhry told a gathering of lawyers in Quetta on Tuesday. He said the results of February parliamentary elections “changed” the country’s culture. “Who did this? This is done by you people and the people of the country. The message is clear that in future everything will be constitutional in the country and there will be no more one-man rule,” Chaudhry said.The new coalition faces the tough task of solving mounting economic problems and spreading Islamic militancy blamed for a surge in suicide attacks. But the new government has also pledged to clip the powers of Musharraf, who stepped down as army chief only in November and whose re-election as president the previous month is deeply disputed.Musharraf purged the SC to prevent it from ruling on the legality of him seeking a fresh five-year term when he was still in uniform. If restored, the judges could revisit the issue. While Musharraf has offered to cooperate with the new government, he has warned that a clash between the presidency and the parliament would damage Pakistan.That has stoked speculation that he could petition the existing SC judges—whom Chaudhry denounced on Tuesday as illegitimate.
