Reinstatement of Pakistan's chief justice ends a crisis, but it might lead to another

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry culminated a two-year struggle by Pakistan's lawyers to safeguard an independent judiciary, highlighted by long processions, sometimes violent clashes, and the repeated arrest and detentions of the leaders of the movement.
As they celebrated on Monday, his supporters speculated about what the chief justice would do once back on the bench. Having been restored by a popular outpouring led by Pakistan's lawyers, the chief justice will have more moral authority than ever, some of his backers said — and with it the potential to further jolt Pakistan's politics.
Through his tribulations, the 60-year-old judge has become the embodiment of the Pakistani people's desire for change and for a fairer society. But even on Monday, the day of the government's announcement, he remained an enigmatic hero, declining to comment to the news media.
He instead stood on the balcony of his house, waving and thanking the jubilant crowd of lawyers and political workers for their efforts in winning his reinstatement. The expectations among his supporters were extraordinarily high.
Before then, there was little to indicate that Justice Chaudhry would become a crusader against the powerful military establishment, friends and supporters say.
Born in 1948 to a lower-middle-class family in the small provincial town of Quetta, he studied and practiced law there.
He became a judge on the high court of Baluchistan in 1990, was appointed to the Pakistani Supreme Court in 2000 and became chief justice in 2005.
At first, he accepted military rule by Mr. Musharraf, who as head of the armed forces had seized power in a coup in 1999. Mr. Chaudhry was one of the judges who validated constitutional changes that the general pushed through to consolidate his rule.
Lawyers who worked with Chief Justice Chaudhry, and later became supporters, acknowledge that at the time they did not like him. He was known for losing his temper and throwing files back in their faces.
"He acted like a Texan bandit," Hassan Akhtar, 34, a lawyer who was trained in Britain, said.
Chief Justice Chaudhry worked hard to clear a backlog of cases at the Supreme Court and took on politically controversial issues, but lawyers complained that he rushed cases through, opened his own cases to address injustices he had come across, and forced lawyers and government officials to jump to his orders.
He began to emerge as a maverick chief justice in 2006 when he blocked the privatization of the Pakistan Steel Mills Corporation, infuriating the prime minister at the time, Shaukat Aziz.
He also took on the military establishment over hundreds of missing people who were alleged to have been held without judicial process in secret detention centers, as Pakistan's part in the campaign against terrorism.
As Mr. Musharraf began to look ahead to securing a second term as president, which would involve bypassing constitutional constraints, he sought to replace Chief Justice Chaudhry with someone more biddable.
Two years ago, when the general called Mr. Chaudhry to his military residence and, in the presence of several other military officials, asked the judge to resign, he refused. The president did not expect the chief justice to show such courage and stubbornness.
Mr. Musharraf dismissed him anyway, setting off a constitutional crisis. The refrain among average people in this impoverished country was that the attempt to remove the justice summed up all the social and economic inequities they suffered at the hands of a corrupt and abusive system.
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