MR Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim has resigned from the experts' committee which was set up in Dubai, and on whose deliberations the entire nation was awaiting to get the parliamentary resolution which would restore the ousted judges to the superior courts and thus presumably end the judicial crisis which had fired it up for the last year. Mr Ebrahim was responsible for drafting the first resolution which was not approved by the PPP co-chairman before the Dubai meeting, thus necessitating the Dubai-mandated additions to the committee. Mr Ebrahim gave his reasons in a letter to the convener of the committee, Federal Law Minister Farooq H Naek. Copies of the letter were sent to the Pakistan Bar Council, PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif and all other members of the committee. Mr Ebrahim mentioned as his main reason that he would not be party to any attempt to reward those who had taken oath under the PCO issued on November 3, 2008. It is also worth noting that PPP Co-chairman Asif Zardari's reaction is that Mr Ebrahim would be convinced by him to work on the committee once again, and that his reservations would be removed. This reflects a realization that Mr Ebrahim's reason for leaving reflects a major PML-N concern, which has developed after the Dubai meeting, that the PPP is overly concerned with the fate of the judges who had taken oath after the original judges were deposed on November 3. As it is, the committee, which met in Islamabad despite Mr Ebrahim's departure, spent much of its time considering the fate of the judges inducted after November 3. Though those judges are not an insurmountable obstacle, the PPP should realize that their retention will weaken the restoration of judges to the point where their motives are questioned, and will waste whatever brownie points the PPP might earn, wherever they might earn them. So the PPP would do well to listen to Mr Ebrahim indeed.