PML-Q calls for immediate release of judges and lawyers

Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) has called for immediate release of detained judges and lawyers hostile to Musharraf rule, indicating a party’s overwhelming desire to completely march out of the isolated ruler’s shadow ahead of parliamentary polls next week. “No heaven would fall if the government releases them,” PML-Q Secretary-General Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed told a news conference here on Sunday. President Musharraf sacked and arrested independent-minded chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and several other Supreme Court judges in November last year, days ahead they were to decide whether his re-election as president a month ago was legitimate.
Iftikhar Chaudhry and some top legal practitioners, including Aitzaz Ahsan, the president of a national association for lawyers, are in detention since then and there is no indication yet they can be released any time soon.
A major stakeholder in former pro-Musharraf regime, PML-Q leaders have hitherto not called for either the restoration or release of judges.
But they have now suddenly found soft corners for jurists and lawyers in their hearts as Musharraf’s popularity continue to be on free fall. “It is necessary to release them to create a conducive environment for elections,” Mushahid observed, as a bloody campaign for polls scheduled next Monday entered last week but a traditional momentum was missing.
Mushahid ’s statement that came days after a party’s veiled regret for being Musharraf’s associate in his ‘unwise killing spree’ against Islamists suggested how unpopular the beleaguered leader had turned as no one could dare to use him as an election bet.
Several PML-Q contenders, including top leaders are now using past performance and ethnic affiliations as campaign tools instead of their association with the former military general, indication his political support is shrinking. Opposition parties are divided on whether jurists should be restored but they all support their immediate release.
Pro-democracy lawyers and members of an emerging civil society are, however, seem hell bent to uproot what they use to call a fascist rule of Musharraf.