NewsSunday, March 16, 2008
PPP committed to judges’ restoration, says Zardari
* PPP co-chairman vows to stick to Murree Declaration
Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday reiterated his party’s commitment to independence of judiciary and restoration of the judges sacked on November 3. Addressing a 70-member delegation of the People’s Lawyers Forum that called on him at Zardari House, the PPP co-chairman said he would stick to the Murree Declaration. “PPP aims at making the parliament supreme and will not allow any other institution to subvert the sovereignty of the parliament. The party will provide justice to all including the sacked judges and to the institution of judiciary as a whole,” he said. Zardari said he had been a victim of the manipulation of a pliant judiciary at the hands of the executive and spent eleven years in jail without conviction. He said no other party and pressure group had rendered greater sacrifices for the independence of judiciary and the sacked judges than the PPP. “No one therefore has a right to walk taller than the PPP workers on this issue,” he added. He said scores of PPP workers lost their lives, and some had their legs amputated and were crippled for life while fighting for the cause of the judiciary last year. Zardari said the PPP was a trendsetter and would continue to lead from the front. He said new conspiracies were being made against the PPP. “After rigging in selected constituencies, they tried to sow dissension between the PPP and other democratic parties, but ... the PPP joined hands with [other] democratic forces in a coalition arrangement to thwart the conspiracies,” he said. Zardari paid tribute to lawyers for their struggle for democracy, rule of law and supremacy of the constitution. Members of the Pakistan Bar Council, provincial bar councils, divisional presidents and secretary generals of the PLF, Latif Khosa, Farooq Naek and Chaudhry Zamurrad attended the meeting.
Courtesy Daily Times