He still appears to have the backing of fellow generals and the United States, but the growing protests and a blizzard of legal challenges to his suspension of the top judge have thrown his plans for another presidential term into turmoil.

Loyalists insist that Musharraf's March 9 decision to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry was nonpolitical.

But many observers suspect it was an attempt to remove a judge who could obstruct the general's plans to stay in power.

On May 6, an estimated 20,000 people, most of them lawyers and opposition party supporters, gathered in downtown Lahore, Pakistan's main eastern city, to greet Chaudhry who had traveled 280 km in a convoy from Islamabad.

The Japan Times Weekly: May 12, 2007
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