ISLAMABAD: The Lawyers Action Committee (LAC) on Saturday rejected the Judicial Commission of Pakistan’s (JCP) process for appointing judges to the country’s high courts, describing it as “horse trading” and a “horrific” appointment process.
“While the adverse fallout of the 26th and 27th constitutional amendments continues to wreak havoc on Pakistan’s justice system, the current process of appointing judges to the high courts is particularly horrific,” the committee said in a resolution adopted at its meeting in Islamabad.
The committee also nominated veteran lawyer and former Supreme Court Bar Association president Ali Ahmed Kurd to lead a movement it plans to launch on a range of issues confronting the country.
“I have accepted the leadership of the movement with a heavy heart at the insistence of my colleagues, particularly because the people of the country have lost faith in the justice system,” Kurd told reporters at the Supreme Court.
He was accompanied by senior lawyers Hamid Khan, Salahuddin Ahmed and Abid Shahid Zuberi. Kurd was one of the central leaders of the 2007 lawyers’ movement launched after then-president Pervez Musharraf removed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a move widely challenged as unconstitutional.
