Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry Reinstated
Government caved to protestors' demand after threats they'd march to Islamabad.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 16, 2009— -- For the thousands of supporters who streamed through soon-to-be Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry's house in Islamabad, today was the day that wasn't.
On Sunday, this city was filled with trepidation and fear of violent confrontation between protesting lawyers, the opposition party supporting them and troops armed with tear gas and bullets.
Instead, a mix of lawyers and party faithful, young and old, rich and poor, lined up today to shake Chaudhry's hand, filled with happiness and a confidence they can take on the government and win.
"Truth and justice will always prevail in the end," said Tahira Abdullah, a human rights activist, outside Chaudhry's house.
Just a dozen hours earlier, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani, following two days of back-and-forth meetings with the chief of the army, announced the government would reinstate Chaudhry, who had been deposed by then President Pervez Musharraf in 2007.
Chaudhry's supporters had threatened a "long march" from the country's major cities to Islamabad, where thousands planned a sit-in to protest against unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari.
But after violent clashes and open defiance of the police by opposition leader Nawaz Sharif in Lahore Sunday, the government caved to the protestors' main demand and promised to reinstall Chaudhry March 21.
The United States had waged intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy during the political crisis, worried that the confrontation would create a power vacuum in which militants in the country's northwest could grow stronger.
"In that vacuum, the militants could have thrived," admitted an aide to Zardari.
But the United States now finds itself in the same unenviable position it found itself in one year ago: appearing to back an unpopular leader, one who has become "one of the most ridiculed" Pakistani presidents, according to a member of Zardari's party, the Pakistan People's Party.
"Never before so many officers in the party have resigned and refused orders," said the official, who was close to former prime minister Benazir Bhutto but has fallen out of favor with Zardari's faction of the party. "There's such a complete discontentment that the slightest wind against Zardari will destroy him. If he had not bent yesterday, then he was doomed, along with the party."
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