The officials who bowed to President Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of emergency rule and ouster of judges last year will be “punished”, sacked chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said on Sunday.He was addressing a convention in Faisalabad, where thousands of lawyers and other activists gathered to whip up support for a new round of protests aimed at pressuring the coalition government into restoring the sacked judiciary.
Chaudhry told lawyers in Faisalabad that the Supreme Court had passed an order aimed at countering the president’s actions on November 3, the same day the emergency was declared. Chaudhry promised that anyone who violated the order “will be punished no matter how big he is and whatever position he is attaining”.
The state-run APP news agency quoted him as saying that the judges who had taken oath under Musharraf’s Provisional Constitution Order had violated the Constitution and would be held accountable. He did not specify what he meant by ‘punishment’.