As political parties devise various stratagems to win the January 8 elections, including release of mesmerising manifestoes by some, the issue of reinstatement of deposed judges is being shifted to the back burner.
Among the reasons for this, the most readily advanced is that reinstatement of judges is too intractable an issue, at least for the time being, and if pressed for urgent resolution it may destroy the already tenuous unity of the opposition forces.
Rightly, then, over the last three days the opposition's two principal alliances, Alliance for Restoration of Democracy and All Parties Democratic Movement, have not been able to forge an agreement on whether this issue should be made part of the Charter of Demands to be presented to the government.
As to how the opposition leaders dispose of this 'hot potato' we would learn soon, but for the lawyers' community reinstatement of deposed judges is as crucial as holding the general election, if not more. The argument presented by its leaders is like this: "Every stage of the election process is conducted and supervised by the judiciary. Given our electoral system, it is naïve to say that the issue of restoration of judges can be taken up after election.
Independent judges supervising the electoral process is the only guarantee of a free and fair election". However, the present president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, is a little less optimistic than his predecessor, Munir A Malik, who is cited above. His worry is that in the "hustle and bustle" of electioneering the struggle for restoration of pre-Emergency judiciary may lose its tempo.
In a letter from his sub-jail, that his house has been declared, Ahsan has asked the lawyers to campaign for binding all candidates, in case the mainstream political parties decide to go for elections, to an "oath" that, if elected, they would work for the cause of the judiciary.
Given his ingenuity for detail, Aitzaz Ahsan has spelt out the modus operandi how this oath would be taken, the entire procedure being a public commitment by the candidate who would find it more or less impossible to go back on it. The oath, to be taken at the offices of bar associations across the country under full media glare, would require of each deponent that if elected he or she would "move, pursue and vote for a motion, resolution, law or amendment" ensuring restoration of ousted judges. The oath papers would be preserved and widely publicised by the bars to tell the electorate that only those who took the oath are 'pre-qualified candidates'. Those candidates that avoid taking this oath would be not approved by the bars as deserving candidates. As a follow-up of the move to sustain pressure, the lawyers have been asked to join the "judicial bus movement" that would take all those judges who did not take oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) on a tour of the country. According to Aitzaz Ahsan's letter, some time late next month the bus would travel from Islamabad to Lahore and later on to some other cities and that this movement would continue till the independence of judiciary is fully restored. The SCBA chief has further asked the lawyers to field their own candidates in case the opposition parties decided to take part in the elections, without taking the oath suggested by him.
If the mainstream opposition parties decide to boycott elections the lawyers will have succeeded in convincing the people at home and abroad that their movement for restoration of deposed judges has the popular backing. That would strengthen their case against the imposition of November 3 emergency rule and its aftermath.
But in case the opposition parties go for elections the lawyers would not like their movement to be left out in the cold. Aitzaz Ahsan's "strategy to use the momentum to our advantage" is indeed a novel idea and if it works it would bring back to the centre stage the whole saga of sacking of judges who refused to be henchmen. At the same time, in a way it also acts as an 'exit strategy' for the opposition parties that are presently bogged down in finding a way out of the sticky swamp of indecision on the question of boycotting the elections.
That politics is an art of the possible is aptly reflected in the letter that Aitzaz Ahsan, who is both a lawyer and a politician, has sent to his colleagues. Will this oath restrict the freedom that an elected member of parliament should have remains a question, however. But, that freedom is never unlimited, particularly when members have to work within the party-lines and follow party manifestoes.