Re: Pakistan’s top judge is suspended
Musharraf wanted the CJ to resign to avoid being investigated by the SJC…
Let’s dispense with legal niceties and get to the political gist of the matter. In the year of his re-election, after a general election that the opposition is convinced won’t be fair, President General Pervez Musharraf has chosen to call the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, to his military ‘camp’ headquarters and fire him. He wanted the chief justice to resign to avoid being investigated by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) for alleged “misconduct and misuse of authority” but the chief justice refused, whereupon the president, under the relevant article of the Constitution, issued a ‘reference’ to the SJC which took no time in ‘suspending’ Mr Chaudhry and asking him to face an inquiry on March 13. Of course, it is a legal curiosity whether the acting chief justice was sworn in before the SJC had announced the CJP’s suspension!