ISLAMABAD, April 25: The government virtually delayed a promised justice to deposed judges as it sent the National Assembly into an indefinite recess on Friday without getting a resolution passed for their reinstatement, though five days are still left to meet a deadline.

Under a schedule set by itself, the ruling coalition has up to April 30 to reinstate about 60 judges of the Supreme Court and the four provincial high courts who were sacked under President Pervez Musharraf’s controversial Nov 3 emergency decree.

But the prorogation of the house went against earlier plans to bring the resolution to facilitate the judges’ reinstatement during the April 10-25 first regular session of the new lower house that had given hopes the task would be completed even some days before the deadline set in a declaration issued last month by the leaders of the two main coalition parties.

Coalition sources said a new session of the National Assembly could be called any time before the deadline to take up the resolution as well as a separate package about the independence of the judiciary immediately after the documents were ready for presentation.

But Friday’s prorogation of the house, despite an earlier indication by at least one coalition source that the session could be extended if needed to settle the issue, could spell some dismay for a highly charged legal community and other sections of the society which went through an often bloody struggle for the independence of the judiciary for more than a year.

The March 9 Murree Declaration had committed the coalition government to restore the judges through a resolution to be passed by the National Assembly within 30 days of taking office, for which a countdown began when Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s cabinet was sworn in

by President Musharraf on March 31.

COSTLY AMBIGUITY: “Woh aajaiga jab aana hoga” (that will come when it has to come), PPP’s Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Farooq H. Naek hurriedly remarked to a group of journalists about the fate of the resolution soon after the assembly prorogation.

Mr Naek seemed to have little time to talk as he rushed out of his office in the Parliament House for Friday prayers.

But his terse remark reflected an apparently cautious but politically costly ambiguity maintained by the PPP about one of the most serious problems inherited by the new government it leads.

However, he later told a Dawn correspondent the new session could be called “at any time” when related issues were settled by a joint committee he chairs and the coalition leadership, even if it were to be done through a requisition by the coalition parties in case the usual summoning of the house by the president on the prime minister’s advice caused a delay.

Later at night, the official APP news agency quoted the law minister as saying that the joint committee had prepared its proposals at an evening meeting and now final decision would be taken by the PPP and PML-N leaders.

Education Minister Ahsan Iqbal (PML-N), who is not on the committee, told reporters the coalition “will call the new session before Wednesday” (April 30) whether it was summoned by the president or, upon a requisition, by Speaker Fehmida Mirza.

Most legal experts and former opposition parties now forming the ruling coalition after winning the Feb 18 general election were of the view that the emergency proclamation was unconstitutional despite being upheld by a Supreme Court bench of what are usually called PCO judges, and that actions taken under it, the sacking of judges among them, could be undone by only an executive order.

However, the coalition thought a resolution passed by the National Assembly asking the government to facilitate the judges’ reinstatement would serve as a powerful moral and political force though its legal status remained controversial. On the contrary, the presidential camp and some lawyers of its view, thought the restoration of the judges would need a constitutional amendment by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament because the emergency actions were protected by constitutional amendments decreed by then Gen Musharraf and upheld by his hand-picked PCO judges.

Neither party of the coalition has disclosed the differences that had held up the presentation of the resolution in the National Assembly.

But political sources said these related to the implementation of the resolution and some matters about the other package, such as the tenure of a chief justice.

The legal community suspended its agitation for the revival of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary after the new government advised it to wait for parliament to handle the matter. But lawyers’ organisations have threatened to resume their campaign, including a planned march on Islamabad, if the sacked judges are not reinstated by April 30.

A renewed wait for the next five days is likely to spark new tensions in the legal community over the issue, which has also evoked, in recent weeks, some of the most devastating media speculation for the ruling coalition.