To say that the Supreme Court order striking down the National Reconciliation Ordinance has opened a Pandora’s Box would be a cliché. But then the very existence of Pakistan is a series of such nauseating clichés. The people are wondering that having done the act can the Supreme Court ensure that democracy survives? Or does it care?

One of the leading English daily DAWN in its editorial has underscored the perennial malaise of the rulers of Pakistan –both civilian and military when it responded to Zardari’s cries of conspiracy! To hear President Zardari tell it, great ‘conspiracies’ are afoot to undermine democracy in Pakistan and shove the PPP out of power. The president’s latest outburst against unnamed ‘enemies’ of democracy and the PPP came yesterday on the occasion of Benazir Bhutto’s second death anniversary. But while the president is decrying the alleged assault on democracy, he has yet to explain where exactly the threat is emanating from. Who are these enemies of the state and the PPP? Is the president referring to a section of the media? The army? The ‘establishment’?

“To dismiss out of hand the possibility of some ‘campaign’ against the PPP and the government is of course not advisable. The tawdry history of politics, the weak roots of democracy and the hidden and not-so-hidden forces that can threaten dispensations with genuine electoral legitimacy are all well known.

“The president ought also to think about the possibility that his aggressive public posturing against his unnamed enemies may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are only so many possibilities about where the threat Mr Zardari keeps referring to can come from. With his public comments, Mr Zardari may in fact be alarming persons in those institutions that they could be the target of impending attacks themselves and therefore need to strike before they are struck against. Our advice: put up or shut up.”

Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi wrote in FRIDAY TIMES : “If the confrontation really heats up, both the government and the opposition will lose out while the beneficiaries in the fight will be state institutions like the military, bureaucracy and judiciary

“While the National Reconciliation Ordinance is dead and buried, this episode in Pakistan’s mottled political history will yet again have far-reaching implications for political stability and the future of democracy. Several key questions have to be addressed to understand the complexity of legal or constitutional issues for a society where there is no consensus on the operational norms of the political system and where some people have developed and institutionalised a self-ascribed aura of righteousness.

“First, can democracy be secured by an aggressive judiciary determined to expand its scope of action by pushing around other institutions or does democracy require institutional balance where different state institutions function autonomously while respecting each other’s domain and accepting the other’s institutional interdependence?

“Second, can this matter be left entirely to the courts? If the objective of this whole exercise was truly the elimination of corruption, the whole matter could indeed be left to the courts. However, opposition political parties have used the judgement to pursue their partisan political agenda of seeking to oust the PPP-led government, or at least President Asif Ali Zardari. It is interesting to note that only 13 out of 8041 people who benefited from the NRO belong to the PPP. Out of these 13, only four or five hold cabinet level positions. The opposition campaign is less against the NRO and more against an NRO that has benefited these few cabinet members and President Zardari. One wonders if such selective accountability can ever rid us of corruption.

“Third, if political leaders do not show restraint and engage in a ‘now-or-never’ kind of political wrangling, both the government and the opposition will end up as losers. This will be most damaging for the future of democracy.

“Fourth, the Supreme Court has placed restrictions on the amendment power of the parliament by declaring in the judgement that ‘no change in the basic features of the constitution is possible through amendment.’

“Fifth, while addressing the lawyers in Pakpattan on December 18, 2009, the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court said that no military or civilian dictator would be able to change the constitution. He called upon the lawyers to stay united because there could be conspiracies against the independent judiciary. Against the backdrop of the charged political atmosphere of the post-judgment context, this statement appears to be an attempt to mobilise the lawyers against the government. Is this in any way beneficial to democracy and stability?

“Indeed, the SC judgement has encouraged some senior bureaucrats to defy their political bosses and colleagues. The Interior Secretary decided, on his own accord, to stop the Defence Minister from leading an official delegation to China, and ‘suggested’ that he was disallowed from leaving the country.. These incidents have created the impression that the political government is turning in on itself and losing control of the administration.

“The political situation becomes even more troubling if we take into account the increased strain in the PPP-led government’s interaction with the top brass of the military. For a number of reasons which are beyond the scope of this article the military top brass do not fully trust President Zardari. They think that he and his close associates have attempted to undermine the institutional autonomy of the military. The strain in the presidency-military relation is known to the opposition as well as the superior judiciary which may have made it easy for both to adopt a tougher disposition towards the government, especially the presidency.

“There is also a regional dimension to post-judgement politics. The thrust of the political assault on Zardari and the PPP has come from the Punjab. In 1988, the Punjab led by its then Chief Minister Nawaz Sharif initiated opposition with the blessings of the military. Now, once again, the PMLN is leading the opposition. Its leaders from Sindh do not figure in its current campaign against Zardari and the PPP. Most other critics of the PPP also come from the Punjab.

“The stage seems set, then, for another round of confrontation between the government on the one hand and the PML(N) and some smaller opposition parties on the other. The military and the superior judiciary are expected to sympathise with the opposition. The general perception is that the PPP government and especially President Zardari may be in serious trouble in the near future. However, if the confrontation really heats up both the government and the opposition will lose and the beneficiaries will be state institutions like the military, bureaucracy and judiciary. One wonders why the political enclave must be so self-destructive.”

The NATION editorial brought forth the hypocrisy of the political classes that have milked the exchequer to the madimum extent possible. : “Casting himself in the Robin Hood character and also showing some Marxist views, Mian Shahbaz Sharif has called on the nation to recover the loans waived off between 1997 and 2009 from the corrupt”. It said

But in the end it chose to “join them” since it could not “beat them”. The general public would like the looted wealth, written off loans to the tune of 193 billions, to be recovered. But it is also a fact that a number of cases in this category would have been genuine, like, for instance, those cash-strapped entrepreneurs whose concerns had gone down in the normal course of business. “This happens all over the world”, it said.