Pakistan's new prime minister yesterday ordered the release of judges detained by President Pervez Musharraf, triggering a showdown with Musharraf just minutes after being elected.
Yousuf Raza Gilani, a key aide to assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, immediately promised to free the judges that Musharraf ordered held last November amid fears they might challenge his grip on power.
Legislators cheered as the 55-year-old Gilani, who spent five years in prison under Musharraf's regime, was elected overwhelmingly by the lower house of parliament -- where an anti-Musharraf coalition now holds a majority.
"Today, democracy has been restored thanks to the great sacrifice of Benazir Bhutto," Gilani, wearing a dark suit and tie, said in his first speech to parliament.
"I invite all political forces to join us because the country is facing such a crisis that a single man cannot save it," Gilani said to chants of "Go Musharraf, Go!" and "Long Live Bhutto!"
He quickly established that he was ready to take on the president, who is due to swear him into office today. Gilani said the judges detained and turfed out of office by Musharraf would go free.
Musharraf deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and dozens of other judges under a state of emergency in November, when it appeared the Supreme Court might overturn his October re-election as president.
"I order all the detained judges to be released immediately," Gilani said, referring to Chaudhry and several other judges who remain under house arrest after more than four months.
Police with forklift trucks began removing barbed wire and concrete barricades outside the Islamabad neighborhood where the judges were being held.
An aide to Chaudhry said he was grateful to Gilani and would leave his house today. The judge's son appeared on the balcony of the house where he too has been held since November.
Gilani was in prison for half a decade on corruption charges, which he said were cooked up by the regime to discredit him. His spell in prison won him respect within the ranks of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
He got 264 votes in the 342-seat chamber, while the pro-Musharraf candidate secured 42 votes. There were several abstentions.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS