Is the crisis over?

In the name of "participatory and consensus-oriented" consultations, Prime Minister Gilani finally gave up on his defiance - which was essentially not his, but of the pro-Zardari hawks in the government - and appeared as an uninvited guest at Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry's dinner table and sued for peace.
The rest is history. The battle to impose its own version of an independent judiciary had been lost, in fact on the very day it began at the Chairing Cross in Lahore and on the streets of Lyari in Karachi. It was simply unacceptable to the saner segments of the polity, both civil and uniformed that the executive should plant judges of its liking in the country's higher courts, in defiance of settled norms regulating the appointment of judges and if there were impediments in the way, these should be bulldozed by political pressure and street agitation. Now when all this is behind us, there is the feeling of relief that the storm is finally over.
But was there a lesson to be learnt from the confrontation, we would soon know. The root cause that discernibly sharpened the executive's appetite for a pliant judiciary is still there: the aftermath of the repealed NRO is before the court, with unpredictable consequences, causing worry to the PPP's top leadership. Of course, Prime Minister Gilani has promised fuller implementation of the July 31 judgement of the Supreme Court "in letter and spirit".
But if the past record is any indicator, he is seen to have bitten much more than he can chew. Will he write to the Swiss, Spanish and British governments for the revival of requests for mutual legal assistance in repatriating the nation's millions, illegally parked in foreign banks? Will he offload his tainted ministers? The Supreme Court's verdict on the NRO expects from the Gilani government a series of actions to help restore the state of affairs that existed previously or before the promulgation of the notorious NRO.
Undoubtedly, Prime Minister Gilani has a lot of important decisions to make, without further loss of time, to demonstrate his commitment. If he doesn't, one would think that another Gilani and his former colleague in the PPP, Syed Iftikhar Hussein Gilani, may be right in asserting that the PPP-led government is dragging its feet only to buy time, till the Pak Army gets the new chief - though it is another matter that, historically, the 'handpicked' chiefs invariably turned out to be the nemesis of their so-called benefactors.
Given the enormity of the challenges the country is confronted with, one would very much like to leave behind this debate as to who did what and why, leading to the lethal confrontation between the two pillars of the state, and move on. For this, first and foremost, the fact has to be acknowledged and accepted that by circa 2010, all that was earlier possible for political leaders to do and go unchallenged, in the name of their electoral legitimacy, is no more possible, given that the societal thought process and value determination have undergone a paradigm shift with the emergence of a vibrant electronic media and an assertive civil society as the new stakeholders.
Then, there is the imperative of finding constitutional solutions to issues like the judges' appointments, for which we would like to ask the parliamentary committee on constitutional reforms to complete its work and place it before the parliament. We would not be completely wrong in suggesting that had this committee been a little more active and efficient, the crisis that rocked the country for a good four days would not have appeared.
The Constitution, in its present form, being hugely distorted, no wonder its provisions throw up clashing situations. And this should be done at an accelerated pace so that judiciary regains its fuller potential, a crucial requisite to cope with the humongous case pendency. For millions of litigants, who turn up at the courts every morning, it hardly matters if the judges hearing their cases are the nominees of Governor Salmaan Taseer or appointees of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. This is indeed a legal battlefield victory, but a larger war to obtain conditions for the rule of law and to bring justice to the people at their doorsteps has yet to begin in real earnestness.