Bar Association to vote on two resolutions

One resolution criticises the govt while the other is critical of the court.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court Bar Association’s general house will take up two resolutions today. One is critical of the government for not implementing the judgment of the Supreme Court (SC) in the NRO case. The other resolution is against the SC for allegedly not fixing a petition against the drone attacks for the last six months.

The resolutions had been submitted by Advocates Chaudhry Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan and Dr Abdul Basit. Ishtiaq in the resolutions submitted that the government was not implementing the SC judgment,  which was contempt of court. He said the government was playing favourites as it knew that once the judgment is implemented, cases against their cronies would be restored.

However, some Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) lawyers deemed the LHCBA anti-government and said it was trying to create a rift in the lawyers community.

Advocate Rashid Lodhi, a member of the People Lawyer Forum, said the government had already implemented the judgment but the LHCBA was trying to blow this up into an issue to curry favour with anti-government forces.

He said the Lahore Bar Association, the Punjab Bar Council and the Supreme Court Bar Association are satisfied with the federal government. The LHCBA, on the other hand, he said, was trying to divide lawyers by tabling such resolutions.

Advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique, a member of the LHCBA, said that there was a large portion of the SC judgment that had not been implemented. He said the SC had directed the government to write to the Swiss government to re-open the case against President Asif Ali Zardari. The government, he added, had so far ignored the directive.

In the second resolution, Dr Basit demanded the bar become a petitioner in his appeal filed before the SC for direction to the government to stop the drone attacks. He said that for the last six months he had been submitting applications to get the case fixed but the SC had been ignoring it. If the LHCBA became a party to the case, the advocate added, the case would get fixed for a hearing. He said that he had asked the SC to direct the government to wage a war against those responsible for the drone attacks. He added that the Lahore High Court had already dismissed his petition on the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th,  2011.