Interview with Barrister Kamal Azfar

Even kangaroos can become derby winners: Kamal Azfar

By Uroos Ahmed

KARACHI: Kamal Azfar, who is a former governor of Sindh, a barrister and is affiliated with the Pakistan Peoples Party, has justified party chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s comment that the judiciary was hopping around like ‘kangaroos’ by saying, that “even kangaroos can become derby winners”.

“I look upon this as a great awakening ... a time when Pakistan is coming of age,” he said when asked how he viewed these developments on the judicial front.

“The unconstitutional removal of the chief justice by General Musharraf has succeeded in uniting the entire legal fraternity of Pakistan. I don’t regard General Musharraf as the president any more as he keeps re-electing himself, which is illegal appointment; he cannot be both the chief of army staff and the president.”

According to him, the judiciary is a fundamental organ of the State along with the executive and the legislature but by keeping it non-functional [Musharraf] has put the state on a respirator.

When asked to comment on the nature of the allegations against the chief justice, Azfar said that: “The only crime that the chief justice committed was [that he was] independent and as Justice Wajiuddin said, our only non-negotiable demand is for General Musharraf to withdraw the reference and reinstate Justice Iftikhar Ahmed Chaudhry as the chief justice.”

However, this is not the first time that such action has been taken against a judge. In the past there have been such references, Azfar said. Three of those judges resigned even before the proceedings began. “The only difference right now is that the chief justice will not resign from office and the reference will be conducted through and through.”

Azfar was critical of what he called the government’s belief the problem would have “fizzled out” in the absence of Justice Rana Bhagwandas as the first hearing was scheduled on March 21 when the senior most judge of the Supreme Court was not in the country.

“In [my] meeting with Iftikhar Chaudhry, [he] said he had gone to meet the president under the impression that the issue of the elevation of the judges of the judicial council was to be the focus of the meeting. Instead, he found he was detained there and notified about the reference against the chief justice.”

Azfar said that he found the chief justice under house arrest even when he went to meet him on March 17. “I had to pass three barricades to get to the house and I found that his vehicles had been confiscated as well,” he said. According to Azfar, this was why Justice Chaudhry decided to walk to the reference on the 21st and refused the transportation provided by the government.

According to the rule of law, the head of the state does not have the right to make any decisions unless it is on the advice of the prime minister, Azfar maintained. If the Supreme Judicial Council had sent the reference, then it was at the president’s discretion to allow the reference or not but he himself was in no position to take such a decision, he said.

When asked whether he believed that the president could impose martial law if he were not re-elected, Azfar replied in the negative.

“I don’t believe General Musharraf is in any position to impose martial law as he is no longer the darling of either the western powers or the people of Pakistan. The time of Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan back in 1969 was a different story altogether.”

In the end, he said, there is a need for checks and balances in all three limbs of the State. “But the legal fraternity has faith and we are now standing at the crossroads of a trial-and-error democracy and martial law.”