Adil Najam
Not surprisingly, Pakistan politics remains a mess.
The President remains the master of brinksmanship. Instead of doing the right thing to begin with, he pushes crises to the edge and then, just in the nick of time takes a U-turn. The judiciary keeps testing the limits of its own power and at least a few get worried about what precedents are being set here for the future. Too much, way too much, of national politics is now being played out in the courts for anyone to be totally comfortable with it. The Prime Minister seems to be settling into the role of statesman, but playing with fire as he balances political loyalty with national interest. The military is surprisingly quiet, but no one can confuse a lack of political statement with the lack fo political influence. The opposition, or to be more precise the PML-N, plays a cautious game and Mr. Nawaz Sharif is as much a master of brinksmanship as Mr. Zardari as he tries to capitalize on every downturn on the roller-coaster but forever careful that the entire process is not derailed, because that would mean his own going down with everyone else.
In all the murkiness that is Pakistan politics, one thing is absolutely clear. Our much aligned constitution is now such a mess and has been mishandled and abused by so many in so many ways that it needs urgent care so that it becomes a document that can be actually implemented as a guide to national governance, rather than as a topic of endless debate and unending discussion. Hence, the ghost of the so-called Charter of Democracy – signed when both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were in exile during the Musharraf era – keeps popping its head up.
