Return on PPP's terms

LAHORE - The fresh phase to get the deposed judges back into business, demonstrates more of the mode PPP government has fabricated to do the job on its own terms than accepting what its erstwhile coalition partner, PML(N) as well as the legal fraternity have been crying for over the past nine months.

The re-appointment of eight judges of Sindh under a fresh oath by no means is a re-instatement or their restoration without any midway fresh oath taking, nor it is something which can lead to the revival of November 2 judiciary which now appears only a dream unless something unusual happens.

The outlines of the future picture of judges restoration show the PPP government would take restoration of the Supreme Court judges in the last phase, and if at all it came, Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and some others mainly those who sat on a seven-member bench to stay operation of the November 3 PCO and state of emergency, would be in a tight corner to accept the re-appointment and take fresh oath.

Observers say it would amount to eating a humble pie which these judges would not like to have. They see the movement going back to the square one but with a difference especially when the government could have re-appointed all the deposed judges in one go, but it stayed away from it with a purpose.