ISLAMABAD, Feb 16: National Workers Party (NWP) secretary general and senior lawyer Akhtar Hussain has said the actual role of the All Pakistan Democratic Movement (APDM) will start after the Feb 18 elections as the alliance has been formed to fight against the interference of army and establishment in politics and establish.

Talking to Dawn, the NWP secretary-general dispelled the impression that the APDM had been formed only to run a poll boycott campaign and that it would be disbanded after the elections.

Mr Hussain said that it had been given in the APDM’s declaration that it would continue its struggle till complete elimination of the role of army and bureaucrats from the country’s policy-making process and politics.

He said the government wanted to have a closed door election and the APDM was convincing the people not to go in the sham elections held under President Musharraf.

Mr Hussain, who is former president of Sindh Bar Council, was of the view that the most important issue which the next parliament would face soon after the elections would be the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and those judges who refused to take oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) in the aftermath of the imposition of emergency in the country on November 3.

He expressed the hope that all the deposed judges of the higher courts would be restored soon.

In response to a question about the leading role of Jamaat-i- Islami (JI) in the APDM, Mr Hussain said a majority of the component parties in the alliance were nationalists and secular in nature and this question should have been asked from JI chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed as to how they were sitting with them.

The NWP leader said that there could be no good governance in the country without an independent judiciary. He was of the view that the success of the ongoing lawyers’ movement very much depended upon the role of political parties and civil society members. He, however, expressed his satisfaction over the progress and objectives they had achieved so far through the lawyers’ movement.

Mr Hussain, who started his political career from the platform of National Students Federation (NSF), later joined the defunct National Awami Party (NAP) and Pakistan National Party (PNP) of the late Ghous Bux Bizenjo, said Haiti was the only example in the history of the world where the judges were removed for not giving legitimacy to the military takeover, but there too they were not detained as in the case of Pakistan.

Mr Hussain welcomed the move of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) to commit its party candidates to take up the judiciary issue after becoming members of the assembly by administering oath from them.