Lawyers must hold long march, says Aitzaz.

LAHORE: Lawyers’ National Coordination Council Chairman Aitzaz Ahsan has said that lawyers must hold a long march against the government.

He said the PML-N had fully backed the lawyers’ long march in the past, but he did not know in which position the present Punjab government would help the Long March ‘09. However, the long march would be held under all circumstances.

Addressing the Lahore High Court Bar Association here on Tuesday, Aitzaz said the long march would be peaceful and the government should not try to stop it on its way to Islamabad. He said in case the government stopped the march on the way, at that point the lawyers would stage a sit-in.

He said that the lawyers had never asked the Punjab government or PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif for any support but the PML-N, as a political party, was helping the lawyers in their movement.

He said President Asif Ali Zardari had thrice signed different accords to restore the deposed judges but all in vain. Now every PPP worker was demanding him (Zardari) to fulfil the wish of Benazir Bhutto by restoring the sacked chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Aitazaz said some elements were trying to convince the lawyers on minus-one formula of judges’ restoration, adding it would not be good for the independence of the judiciary. He said without undoing the November 03 acts of former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, there would be no free judiciary in the next hundreds of years.

To a query about his affiliation with the PPP and the lawyers’ movement at the same time, he said he would not quit his party but it did not mean that his priorities had changed with regard to the lawyers’ movement.

He said he always kept the movement as his first priority and his whole family had been protesting on the roads for the movement. He said his differences with the PPP were only at the point of judges’ restoration, which would continue till the restoration of all the sacked judges.

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