Musharraf to use 58(2)b if judges restored through order: Assef

LAHORE - Former foreign minister and PPP MNA Sardar Assef Ahmad Ali has said Pevez Musharraf is not a constitutional president but a de facto whose eligibility as President has yet to be determined.
The present judiciary and Pervez Musharraf as President were not de jure but de facto in status however, Pervez Musharraf wielded Article 58(2)b power to pack up the assemblies anytime, said Sardar Ahmad Ali while addressing at a seminar organised by the People Lawyers Forum on the subject “People are the real heirs to the rule” at the LHCBA here Wednesday.
Senior leader PPP Mian Muhammad Jahangir presided over the seminar while former secretary LHCBA Shahid Muhamood Bhatti, PPP leader Prof Ijazul Hassan, SM Masud, Samiullah Khan and others also spoke.
Sardar Assef Ahmad justifying the course of the PCO to bring the deposed judges back to the job said, the restoration of judges through executive order in a situation when the court had validated the PCO would not only split the Supreme Court but also prompt Mushrraf to use Article 58(2)b. He said Musharraf was looking for this way and the PPP leadership was blocking it by adopting the mode of Constitutional package to restore the judiciary. Referring to lawyers and the PML-N demand for parliamentary resolution to restore the judiciary, he said, they wanted the parliament to do it while the Parliament itself remains under threat of the Article 58(2)b. As such the package has to dispense with this provision to remove the threat too. As to the Murree Declaration, he termed it a mistake by the PPP, which it later on realised after being informed by the legal experts that it could not be implemented.
Ex-minister in the Benazir Cabinet (1993-96), shedding light on the current situation in tribal areas said, the government was being forced to talk to the extremists which would simply mean permitting them to establish a state within the state to enforce a shariah of their choice ending the existence of Pakistan. As a nation, he said, they had to decide whether this was the sort of country for which we had rendered countless sacrifices and Qauid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal had dreamt of. He said the country was passing through a serious situation wherein the PPP leadership was acting sagaciously and appropriately to save it from any further damage.