Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry travelled through the Lahore to Multan on Saturday on his latest trip to meet supporters in a campaign posing a growing challenge to President Pervez Musharraf.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, accompanied by a convoy of dozens of vehicles carrying lawyers and opposition supporters waving flags, was heading from Lahore to the city of Multan, where he was due to address a meeting of lawyers.
Musharraf's suspension of Chaudhry on March 9 has whipped up an anti-government campaign, uniting lawyers defending the independence of the judiciary and opposition parties eyeing elections due by the turn of the year.
Chaudhry, who is fighting for reinstatement through the Supreme Court, has steered clear of party politics since he was suspended. He has not given media interviews and has limited his addresses to meetings of lawyers in different cities and towns. But his supporters have had no qualms in criticising Musharraf, the army chief who seized power in a 1999 coup.
"It is not now an ordinary movement, it has turned into a mass movement against the army generals who have intentionally ruined all institutions to concentrate their power," said one of Chaudhry's lawyers travelling with him, Ali Ahmed Kurd.
Though Chaudhry is accused of misconduct, analysts believe Musharraf wanted him out because he feared the judge would allow constitutional challenges against his plans to be re-elected by sitting assemblies before they are dissolved for a general election. The opposition campaign is the most serious challenge to Musharraf just months before he plans to get re-elected for a second five-year term.
Musharraf has dismissed speculation he might impose a state of emergency to end the agitation against him and he has vowed that presidential and general elections will be held on time. But the opposition, calling for an end to military rule in a country that has been run by generals for more than half the 60 years since its formation, is demanding he gives up his post of army chief.
"We have to decide now who will run the country - the army or the people of Pakistan. We have to get the generals out of all institutions," Kurd told Reuters during a brief stop, just outside the town of Pattoki.
Hundreds of opposition party supporters throwing rose petals mobbed Chaudhry's car at points along the way, reducing his progress to a crawl. Residents also came out to show their support as the convoy passed. "I salute him, his courage. We are with him," said farmer Allah Ditka Bhatti.
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