New Pakistani PM frees former Chief Justice

Pervez Musharraf swore Yousuf Raza Gillani into office as Pakistan’s newly-elected Prime Minister. Gillani returned the favor by removing barricades in front of the houses of judges ousted by Musharraf in his bid to retain his grip on the presidency, including Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the Chief Justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court that Musharraf feared most. Gillani and the Parliamentary coalition run by the late Benazir Bhutto’s PPP plan on reinstating the judges — and that could have severe consequences for Musharraf:

Deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, an icon of resistance to the rule of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, emerged late Monday from nearly five months of house arrest. His release was the first act of a Benazir Bhutto loyalist elected prime minister hours earlier.

It was the latest tumultuous twist in a Pakistani political saga that over the last year has seen the fall from grace of the U.S.-backed Musharraf, the Dec. 27 assassination of Bhutto and the triumph of her party in February’s parliamentary elections.

Yousuf Raza Gillani, picked as prime minister by Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and its main coalition partner over the weekend, won an overwhelming endorsement by parliament. Addressing lawmakers, he declared he was ordering the release of Chaudhry and other detained judges. …

The new prime minister was to sign an executive order freeing the judges today after his formal swearing-in, but joyous supporters of Chaudhry weren’t waiting for that.

With police looking on but not intervening, hundreds of his backers breached police barricades and mobbed the residence where Chaudhry had been under house arrest since Nov. 3, when Musharraf declared martial law and fired dozens of judges in part to avoid a legal challenge to his own election.

Gillani himself understands the nature of Musharraf’s pressure on the judicial system. He spent five years in prison rather than negotiate his release with the Musharraf dictatorship on trumped-up corruption charges. Better than most, Gillani understands the need to re-employ the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary from the executive. He leads a Parliament which intends to do exactly that, and with enough popular support to face down the dictator-cum-elected president.

Chaudhry, meanwhile, played it cool. After joyous supporters removed his barricades and mobbed the house, many of them expected the former Chief Justice to lead a march on the court building to demand his job back. Instead, after a brief address to the people surrounding his house, Chaudhry went back inside his house. He wants to wait for parliamentary action to restore him to his seat, which is a smart move and one that allows for an orderly process back to the rule of law. It also avoids potential violence, which could play into the hands of Musharraf, at least in the short run.

The return of the judges would almost certainly result in a challenge to Musharraf’s election as president.  Musharraf at first appeared confident that they would certify his candidacy last year when the case first got argued in the Supreme Court.  Musharraf didn’t start arresting judges until the court delayed a decision on Musharraf to a date past the point when the candidates needed to be set.  Having done that, though, a reinstated independent bench certainly would have a large amount of hostility to his case, as does the entire Pakistani nation at this point.

The US and its Western allies had better hope that they can start working a deal with Gillani to face down the radical Islamists in Waziristan and North West Frontier Province.  The war has become as popular as Musharraf himself, and even though the army has pledged to fight the terrorists, the Pakistanis have tired of Musharraf and his anti-terrorist policies.  Bhutto claimed that she wanted to fight smarter and harder than Musharraf against the people who wound up assassinating her; we will see if that survives in her PPP party after they get rid of Musharraf and shake the alliance with America.