Re: Musharraf’s Chief of Staff meets CJ Iftikhar
I think some people here are just looking for juicy story to point out that CJ ain’t better than others. Here are details of the meeting. In fact meeting took place on Friday.
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=10141
CJ, president’s COS meeting yields positive results
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: Eight key judicial and other appointments became possible only after a meeting of the President’s Chief of Staff (COS) Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Javed with Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
The COS was “called” for a meeting with the chief justice in his chamber in which views were exchanged only on filling up of vacancies in two high courts in view of the demands of their chief justices and bar associations.
One of these appointments pertained to the selection of the Supreme Court judge, Justice M Javed Buttar, as Chairman of the Central Zakat Council (CZC). President General Pervez Musharraf has the authority to nominate a sitting judge as the CZC chief on the recommendation of the chief justice.
“However, the appointment was stuck up for more than a year because of the serious differences as the Presidency was not willing to accept what had been recommended to it. This was the state of affairs in the pre-March 9 scenario,” an official told The News. The result was that the CZC continued to be without a chairman for a long time.
The appointment of six additional judges in the Sindh High Court also became possible only because of discussions between Justice Chaudhry and the COS. The seventh appointment related to Justice (retd) Mian Mohammad Ajmal’s nomination as special secretary of law, which was done by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
To avoid any scandal, the Supreme Court Registrar Dr Faqir Hussain, obviously on the chief justice’s direction, deliberately made public the “calling” of Hamid Javed on Justice Chaudhry to discuss a purely official matter as the judicial work at the high courts having lesser number of judges was going to suffer.
Justice Chaudhry made it a point that the meeting was held in his office, not residence. He wanted to convey to all and sundry that to ensure smooth functioning of judicial bodies, he was not reluctant to call concerned officials to his chamber for discussions, but beyond that, there would be no socialization.
The apex court publicized the Friday’s meeting a day after it was held, but only after the judicial appointments, discussed in it, were notified by the government. It, thus, became clear that the meeting turned out to be productive. It has not been clarified why the announcement that the session took place was delayed by a day.
In the past, there had been serious differences between the chief justice and the government over the appointment of judges in high courts and the Federal Shariat Court. These were exposed after the presidential reference was filed against Justice Chaudhry.
This time, the COS was “called” for the meeting in the chief justice’s chamber in total contrast to his earlier session after the July 20 reinstatement of Justice Chaudhry by the full court when he had paid a surprise visit to the chief justice at his residence in the Judges’ Colony.
The purpose of that meeting was to try to mend fences and to do away the deep mistrust that had cropped up after the filing of the reference against Justice Chaudhry. But that session had not broken the ice with the chief justice, adhering to his decision to keep a distance from the government’s top political leaders, including the president, the prime minister and federal ministers, and the presidential camp.
The apex court registrar stressed that nothing except matters relating to the vacant posts of judges at the two high courts was discussed in Justice Chaudhry’s meeting with Hamid Javed.
However, it may be a mere coincidence that Hamid Javed’s session with the chief justice took place on Friday, and the same day Justice Chaudhry excluded himself from the larger Supreme Court bench that would hear petitions filed by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Imran Khan and others from Monday against Musharraf’s holding of two offices. But it is not known whether the chief justice-COS meeting was held before or after Justice Chaudhry’s commendable decision to withdraw from the bench.
The last meeting, when it was exclusively reported by the Investigation Cell of this newspaper, had created a controversy, and embarrassment for some. The chief justice had confirmed it in an implied manner when he had said that the one who met him should be asked about this session. The attorney general verified that the meeting took place.
This time, the chief justice did not want to have any kind of confusion over Friday’s meeting. His registrar officially announced it, in order to take care of any kind of speculation. Its public disclosure also showed the extreme care and caution that Justice Chaudhry is exercising after his historic restoration on July 20.
