Lawyers urge MMA to stand firm on LFO

ISLAMABAD: The Action Committee of Lawyers on Monday urged the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal not to retreat from its earlier stance on the Legal Framework Order (LFO) and General Pervez Musharraf’s presidential status, as lawyers would never accept any adulteration to the 1973 Constitution and an unconstitutional president.

Senior member of the All Pakistan Lawyers Action Committee Chaudhry Muhammad Ikram made this statement on Monday addressing a press conference. He said all representative lawyers’ organisations, including the Pakistan Bar Council, the Supreme Court Bar Association and provincial and district bar associations, had vowed to continue struggle unless the LFO was repealed and a three-year extension to judges’ retirement age is withdrawn.

“We are working for the supremacy of parliament, the independence of the judiciary and the country’s solidarity and the MMA should give crucial support to the lawyers’ movement.” He said the MMA was an ideological alliance and as such it should not enter into any unconstitutional deal with the government.

“The mandate given by the public to the MMA calls for the adoption of an anti-government stance. The MMA will lose public support if it opts to go the other way,” he said. Mr Ikram said the Army had no role whatsoever in civil affairs. “According to the Constitution, the Army is subservient to civil authority and it can be called in only to help maintain law and order in the country,” he added.

“There is army rule in the country but our soldiers are being killed by their American counterparts,” he said. He specifically questioned a joint Pak-US military operation in Bannu, part of the hunt for the Al Qaeda. “It is all being done against the sovereignty and solidarity of the country,” he said.

He went on to say that the constitutional duty of the armed forces was to “defend the country’s geographical frontiers, but at the moment “we are being targetted by foreigners in our own homeland”.

The committee’s joint meeting and lawyers’ representative organisations have endorsed the existence of the Action Committee for one more year. —Staff Report

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