PPP leader Senator Babar Awan is playing a major role in persuading his party's leadership to deviate from the Murree Declaration and not to completely restore the judiciary as it was on November 2, sources privy to his meetings with Asif Ali Zardari told The News.
Babar Awan is also assuring the top man in the PPP that there would be no disturbances from the lawyers on a large scale, if the PPP moved ahead with it own way of restoring the judges, excluding Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Justice Javed Iqbal, which will enable Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar to continue as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Two PPP leaders told The News that it was none else but Babar Awan who was giving advice, which was in direct conflict to the Murree Declaration, to Zardari on the restoration of judges and was assuring him that he would handle any situation that might arise in case the PPP-led coalition government restored the judges through a parliamentary resolution.
Awan has also told Zardari that only those judges who are junior to Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar should be restored through a process of scrutiny by parliamentary committees. One of these leaders also said that Babar was contacting different lawyers having affiliations with the PPP across the country, presenting him as a messenger of the party's co-chairman and persuading them not to follow the instructions of the lawyers’ leaders, especially Aitzaz Ahsan, and not to boycott or agitate if some judges were not restored. Senator Babar Awan, who according to PPP sources is also an aspirant of becoming the governor Punjab or chairman Senate, when approached by The News was asked to comment on his attempts to subvert the Murree-Declaration. He said that first he should be told the names of the two PPP leaders who were the source of information of this correspondent. On refusal to name the sources, Babar neither denied nor admitted but kept mum. He then started accusing Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan for whatever was happening in the country for the last two days, yesterday in Lahore and today in Karachi.
He held the SCBA president, without naming him, responsible for dictating the lawyers and ordering them to torture Sher Afgan Niazi. However Niazi, after the incident, had praised the role of Aitzaz in rescuing him from the mob and did not hold the lawyers responsible for his ordeal. Babar alleged that the SCBA 'king' was dictating to parliament, he was dictating to the lawyers and he was dictating to the nation. "He wants to subvert the democratic process and the newly-elected democratic government," Babar added. Aitzaz Ahsan, President SCBA, when contacted by this correspondent and asked about Babar Awan's allegations said he did not want to comment on any statement made by Babar.
When Babar Awan was asked whether he was trying to contact different lawyer leaders across the country in a bid to split the movement and not to resist or agitate if the all the judges sacked on Nov 3 were not restored or any other move in this regard by parliament, he simply said that in his 25-year career as a lawyer he had never indulged in politics of lawyers.
Source:
TheNews
Thursday, April 10, 2008
By Muhammad Ahmad Noorani
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