[JURIST] Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday appointed 34 new judges, including three to the country’s Supreme Court, after Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry blocked Zardari’s original selections. The court blocked the selections last week because Zardari did not consult with the Supreme Court prior to making the nominations, as mandated by section 177 of the Pakistani Constitution. Among the new Supreme Court justices are Saqib Nisar and Asif Saeed Khosa. Nisar’s appointment raised questions within Pakistan, as Chaudhry had previously blocked his nomination to the Lahore High Court. Chaudhry administered the oath of office to the new Supreme Court justices on Thursday, ending a week of controversy over judicial appointments. Within Pakistan, the resolution of the situation was seen as a victory for preservation of an independent judiciary.
\nEarlier this week, lawyers in Pakistan boycotted the courts in protest of both Zardari’s attempt at bypassing constitutional measures and at the Supreme Court’s actions. The latest clash between the judiciary and the executive in Pakistan continues their history of disputes. Last month, the Supreme Court released a detailed judgment in the controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance case, striking down an ordinance granting immunity to Zardari and 8,000 other government officials from charges including corruption, embezzlement, murder, and terrorism between January 1986 and October 1999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[JURIST] Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday appointed 34 new judges, including three to the country’s Supreme Court, after Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry blocked Zardari’s original selections. The court blocked the selections last week because Zardari did not consult with the Supreme Court prior to making the nominations, as mandated by section 177 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4174,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}