I was so delighted to see this news and the pic of CJ in the front-middle of NYtimes. It has just now updated the report and here it is for you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/world/asia/17voices.html?hp
** Pakistanis Rejoice Over Restoration of Chief Justice **
ISLAMABAD — It was a day of rejoicing, of drum playing, and of smiling at strangers. Pakistan’s chief justice had just been reinstated after a two-year struggle, and for those assembled in the country’s capital to celebrate, anything seemed possible.
“We’re watching history,” said Javed Ali Khan, a 45-year-old who had traveled for days with his wife and six children to participate in a national march of lawyers and opposition political parties. It was the opposition’s perseverance in the face of government attempts to quash the march that led to the reinstatement.
Hassan Akhtar, a lawyer who grew up in England, gushed: “It’s really wonderful. It’s a once in a lifetime experience. I couldn’t even dream of this.”
In the crowd, whose members included a radio announcer who was researching homosexuality and an illiterate mechanic who wore a flower pot on his head to stay cool and admitted to stealing monkeys to get by, one word was on everybody’s lips.
“Justice,” said Mr. Khan’s wife, Rubina Javed, smiling broadly. “We came for justice.”
The word was apt for the victory at hand: the restoration of the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, to his court. But others in a jubilant crowd celebrating on Mr. Chaudhry’s lawn on Monday were working from a broader interpretation.
“Justice is the solution to the common man’s problems,” Ms. Javed said, seated on a blue scarf on the grass with two daughters and four sons, ages 6 to 18, around her. “I want justice in schools, on roads, in transportation. Now the common man is speaking.”
In the Arab world, the word is a constant companion. Islamic political movements use it in struggles against autocrats, arguing that justice is a central tenet of Islam.
But in Pakistan, the political class comes from a powerful feudal elite, which has largely avoided policies that would bring greater social equality, like land reform. With only half of the population literate, so far the strategy has worked.
“The ruling elite can get away with anything,” said Muhammad Ali, a software engineer. “They are like kings here.”
But the lawyers’ movement may be starting to change that. Though small in number, it is made up of an educated, diverse cross section of Pakistani society that includes lower middle class professionals, whose reach may extend deeper into Pakistan’s 160 million population than initially expected.
“This movement has given an awareness to the common people in Pakistan of their rights,” said Shamoon Azhar, 26, a doctoral student at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, sitting on the lawn with a large group of his friends. “This is about awareness. It’s given people confidence. It’s shown people it can happen.”
Ms. Javed’s daughters both wore stickers of Mr. Chaudhry stuck to the fronts of their brightly colored dresses, with the words, “My Hero,” in English, in bold script. The family earns about $250 a month, too little to send the children to private school. Most Pakistanis consider their country’s public school system to be broken.
Mr. Chaudhry’s move to press powerful government elites to account for their actions “would have been normal in Scandinavian countries,” said Faisal Bashir, another in the group, “but here just by doing something right, turns you into a hero.”
The crowd seemed to have a life of its own. Noisy bands of celebrating lawyers swept through, playing drums and singing. Some brought flowers for Mr. Chaudhry. An old man sold spicy vegetable fritters; A boy passed a platter of fresh coconut.
They spoke excitedly about how the success of the march had made a break with Pakistan’s past, and how much had changed in the country in the last decade.
“The feudal system, it was in the past,” said Mazhar Iqbal, a private school manager. “There was no media then. No education. The poor were poor forever. Now is the time to wake up. It’s been 60 years and we’ve been wasting our time.”
Saif Abbas, a consultant who used to work for the Asian Development Bank in Islamabad, was more clear-eyed about the meaning of the march. Pakistan is still a poor country with a vast illiterate population, and a corrupt, unresponsive ruling class, he said.
“This country has to take control of its own future, and that’s education,” he said, holding a flag. “Unfortunately, we’re just not there yet.”
His vision for Pakistan is a “thoroughly democratic” country based on an Islamic system of governance, with a strong, powerful middle class, like that in Turkey or Malaysia. The current system will simply perpetuate the power of the mullahs on one hand, he said, and the elite, on the other, “who are totally disconnected from the people of this country.”
In that respect, the march was meaningful.
“The next government is going to fear the people who pushed this one against the wall,” he said, as a troupe of lawyers from a city in central Pakistan, stormed past.
A revolution it is not, he said. “But it’s a good beginning.”