Pakistani lawyers denounce leader of ruling party

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani lawyers on Thursday fiercely denounced the leader of the main ruling party, potentially heralding a new chapter in their months-long push for the restoration of judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf.

About 150 lawyers and political activists gathered outside the Supreme Court building in the capital, Islamabad, and chanted "Go, Zardari, go!" — a reference to Asif Ali Zardari, whose Pakistan People's Party leads the country's new coalition government.

Lawyers have held a series of protests to demand the reinstatement of the dozens of judges Musharraf sacked in November last year to avoid legal challenges to his rule. The protests have often demanded the president step aside, and this latest one did as well.

But the attorneys have generally avoided a direct confrontation with Zardari and his party, which has promised to restore the justices but has not done so as quickly as the lawyers want.

At the Islamabad rally, protesters demanded that Zardari bring the judges back immediately.

"Do not play with lawyers' emotions ... do not test our patience," said Hamid Khan, a key figure in the lawyers' movement, from atop a truck parked outside the gleaming white building. "Restore our courageous judges."

The two main parties in the coalition came to power after winning February elections on anti-Musharraf platforms. They pledged to quickly restore the judges, but had a falling out over how to do so.

Ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party, the second-largest in the ruling alliance, favors an outright restoration of the justices, possibly through an executive order from the prime minister. But Zardari has linked the judges' return to broader reforms in the constitution.

The dispute led Sharif to pull out his party's ministers from the Cabinet and has brought the coalition to the verge of collapse.

In Lahore on Thursday, where a similar protest was held, lawyers' movement leader Aitzaz Ahsan said plans were in the works to have lawyers stage two-hour sit-ins once a week in their respective areas to keep up the pressure on the government.

Ahsan faced criticism after a massive rally in June in Islamabad that brought together tens of thousands of lawyers from around the country ended without a sit-in.

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