UPDATED ON:
Thursday, September 06, 2007
19:57 Mecca time, 16:57 GMT
 
News CENTRAL/S. ASIA
Lawyers rally against Musharraf
Musharraf's current presidential term
ends in November [AFP]
Pakistani lawyers have boycotted courts and rallied across the country calling for General Pervez Musharraf, the president, to stand down.
 
Chanting "go, Musharraf go" and "down with dictatorship" about 1,500 lawyers marched in the city of Lahore demanding Musharraf resign as both president and the head of the army.
Similar protests were held in Peshawar, Quetta and other cities on Thursday while courts were largely deserted throughout the country.
 
"Our struggle is for the restoration of real democracy and the end of military dictatorship," said Munir A Malik, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said the lawyers were determined to bring an end to army rule and restore democracy.

 

Serious challenge

 

He said an invigorated judiciary posed a serious challenge to Musharraf.

 

The protests came as lawyers of Musharraf told the Surpreme Court that his current presidential term ends on 15 November.

   

Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the Surpeme Court chief justice, had ordered the government on Wednesday to name the date on which Musharraf's term in office would expire.

  

His order came after the Supreme Court took up a legal petition, filed by the radical Jamaat-i-Islami party, which challenges a 2004 parliamentary act allowing Musharraf to be president-in-uniform.

 

Mounting woes

 

Musharraf aims to get re-elected by the national and provincial assemblies some time between 15 September and 15 October and to hold a general election around the end of the year.

   

But he is facing a barrage of legal and political opposition.

 

Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who Musharraf ousted in 1999 and later sent into exile, has vowed to return on 10 September, despite the possibility of arrest on corruption charges, to mount a campaign to end Musharraf's rule.

   

In the face of his deepening political problems, Musharraf has turned for help from another exiled former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, in the hope that a power-sharing deal with her would boost his legitimacy and help him overcome constitutional hurdles to holding on to power.

 Source: Agencies
 
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