Accountability process against Chief Justice not for first time: Raza Kasuri

The counsel for the government in the Chief Justice reference, Ahmad Raza Kasuri, has said that the accountability process that has been initiated against the Chief Justice is not being carried out for the first time.
"There is a process of accountability of important persons, including President, Prime Minister, Speaker and others, in all civilised countries of the world, but in no country a Chief Justice, who is being held accountable, goes to streets and bazaars. But in Pakistan, the Chief Justice has become a politician," he said in an interview with a private TV channel on Saturday.
He said that the process of accountability is also given in the Pakistan Constitution. Raza said that political parties, for a long period, had no issue and they could not capture the people's attention, but now they got an issue, and all political parties were using it to get political mileage.
He said that an FIR is a brief document, but as the case unfolds and witnesses come forward, it widens and then becomes a judicial record consisting of thousands of pages. He said that the reference, too, is like an FIR, which is a basic document, and now more documents are coming.
Ahmad Ali Kurd, counsel for Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, said that "there is nothing in the reference" but the judicial set-up had been suspended for the past three months. He said that Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is going to address bars, but the government is arresting political workers. He said, "I challenge the government to arrest even a single lawyer all over the country." He said: "What is the fault of political workers? They only come to welcome the Chief Justice and chant a few slogans."
He said that the Intelligence chiefs had no right to submit these affidavits as "they are neither party not have any connection with this battle". "If there had been any affidavit it should have come from General Musharraf", but he did not file any affidavit and now, in the legal language, he has lost the right to do so.
Kurd said that after the "war" of judiciary's independence, no judge would attend a dinner hosted by any executive official. As far as Chief Justice Iftikhar is concerned, he never went to any dinner, he added.