Today marked the retirement of the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Chaudhry has played a central role in many of Pakistan’s most dramatic developments in the past eight years during which he served on the court. AP has a capsule summary of some of those events:
He was appointed chief justice in 2005 and attracted national prominence two years later, when he was sacked by then-President Pervez Musharraf. He was reinstated in 2009 after a protest movement led by the nation’s lawyers.
I must confess to having been turned into a huge fan of Pakistan’s lawyers during this time. The images of hordes of lawyers clad in black suits and marching in support of the rule of law led to many fantasies of such things happening here in the US. It took two years of demonstrations and the election of a new government after Musharraf was forced to step down, but Chaudhry eventually was released from detention and returned to his spot on the bench.
It should be noted that current Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif played a large role in the final movement that procured Chaudhry’s release. The first four minutes of this story from Al Jazeera provide a good summary of those momentous developments:
[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT5CyK9AsbM’]
Chaudhry will be a very tough act to follow.