Agreeing to disagree

Last Saturday, President Asif Ali Zardari had Nawaz Sharif for a dinner, variously described as merely a social affair having little political significance and also as the 'coming together' of two erstwhile allies who having won the battle against the deeply entrenched military dictator had quarrelled and parted company.
After August last when the PML (N) ministers walked out of the federal cabinet protesting over inaction by the government for the promised restoration of deposed judges, this was the first summit level contact between the two sides. Many of the deposed judges have returned to their courtrooms, thanks to bureaucratic engineering by the Farooq Naek-headed law ministry, but the issue still remains hanging fire unless Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry is reinstated.
Their differences also persist on many other points, for they have a conflicting worldview, most importantly their perceptional mismatch over Pakistan's role in the so-called US-led war on terror. They also differ over the need to retain or revoke the Seventeenth Amendment. But the ground reality as it tends to emerge over the last seven months that the elected governments have been in office in the Centre and the provinces, power has begun imposing its own diktat.
The international war on terror has acquired a new dimension, as it has spilled over into Pakistan and pitted a home grown powerful militancy against the national armed forces. The insurgency in Balochistan has refused to die down. Both the situations are said to be aggravated by the perennially hostile foreign powers. While all this is happening, the country is sinking in a deeper and deeper economic crisis.
The government's inability to confront this challenge on one hand has undermined its popularity and on the other limited its options to seeking help from the quarters greatly resented by the general public: The International Monetary Fund. These are formidable challenges; failure of the elected government in meeting them squarely may cause a serious setback to the democratic process. That is one important concern both the PPP and PML (N) leaderships share.
Whatever the degree of estrangement between the two, they cannot afford democracy to fail. That brought Nawaz Sharif to the dinner table at the presidency on Saturday night. This commonality of interest is deeply embedded in the Charter of Democracy, a fact that came up for re-commitment at the dinner.
Agreed to by Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto in June 2006 to meet the requirement of a joint struggle against a common adversary of that time has acquired relevance once again. It would help overcome the differences over the future of Justice Chaudhry, in that the Charter supports the original PPP outlook on the issue of judges.
If that would suit President Zardari, the other commitment of the signatures to the Charter of Democracy, that is removal/amendment of Seventeenth Amendment, will clear Nawaz Sharif's candidature for another stint as prime minister. However, beyond these specifics there is this democratic ambience that the two sides would like to obtain in their individual and common interests.
The decade-long mutual confrontation that the PPP and PML (N) leaderships had nurtured and promoted and by that had brought on them their successive dismissals was pledged to be eschewed. Confronted with political uncertainty stemming from the economic crisis and unabated militancy has rekindled the spirit of co-operation.
A functional democracy envisages existence of two opposing forces working within the parameters of bipartisanship. They agree to disagree. They may have radically conflicting perceptions and perspectives on vital national issues but they work under the same roof. That, believably, was the subject matter of the talk at the dinner table.
Both Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have acquired the desired confidence in their respective positions: While the PPP feels secure in the Centre and three provinces the PML (N) is safely entrenched in Punjab. They no more feel threatened. Given mutual trust and confidence the PPP and PML (N) would like to act as two wheels of the traditional cart and move forward, keeping a sharp eye on the pits on both sides of the road.