The inevitable has happened. The Supreme Court has suspended the appointments of two sitting judges to new positions made by President Zardari, declaring his action unconstitutional.
The order, passed by a three-member bench, which suo motu heard the case of the elevation of Chief Justice of Lahore High Court to Supreme Court and the appointment of acting Chief Justice of Lahore High Court notified by the government Saturday evening says, the necessary 'consultation', the President is supposed to have made with the Chief Justice of Pakistan under Article 177 of the Constitution, did not take place.
As to what should be the consequences for this amiss, on the part of the President, will be determined by an already-constituted larger bench, which will start the hearing of the three identical petitions regarding the judges' appointments from February 18.
So the long-brewing confrontation between the executive and the judiciary that started afresh - the earlier one had resulted from General Musharraf's bid to dislodge Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry - in the wake of the apex court's landmark order in the matter of his election as President of Pakistan, seems to be heading towards a dangerous culmination.
Have we already arrived at the dreaded precipice? Our hope still is that the final showdown is somehow averted - though it seems improbable that the larger bench would reverse the verdict, nullifying the presidential notification. May be Prime Minister Gilani has some idea up his sleeves to avert the collision, which appears so much certain in coming - his first quoted reaction was "there is a remedy to every wrong".
Ideally, things should not have been allowed to come to such a sorry pass. But this has happened, confirming an impression that some legal eagles close to the President had miscalculated the expected fallout, particularly in case of Justice Saquib Nisar, whose position that he would remain steadfast in his commitment to the independent judiciary was too well-known to be overlooked.
Were they feeding the President Zardari hidden desire to have a judiciary of his liking, more so, because the present one had thrown out the NRO, we cannot speculate. But Nawaz Sharif thinks so; in so many words he has held President Zardari solely responsible for the crisis. His anger is Zardari-centric, as he described the president as "the biggest threat to democracy".
But between the lines that he uttered at a press conference, after a conclave of his party's top brass, he left nobody in doubt that he would not rock the boat hard enough that it should go under water. No wonder then, as the PPP workers in Lahore burnt his effigy, he advised restraint to his party men.
There is a tinge of wait-and-see in his position, as against others like the Jamaat-i-Islami and Tehrik-i-Insaf that want the people to come out on streets in support of the Supreme Court. On a call by their National Co-ordination Council, hundreds of lawers joined rallies accross the country yesterday, denoucing Zardari. Having registered their protest, they too are required to hold back their anger as the matter is sub judice.
Given the security situation on the borders and within the country, we think that there is more than enough work cut out for the armed forces and there is no danger of a military take-over, and there is also no evidence suggesting the opposite. But to this 'patience', there is always a limit. After all, we have a history of military take-overs in the name of securing the polity against anarchy and chaos.
Of course, the political forces would not like that tradition to be repeated, and that indeed confronts the political forces with the hard choice between a dictatorial duly-elected President and his ouster through street power. But even when the political forces decide to play safe, an eventuality of a serious clash is very much in the nature of the issue before the Supreme Court.
What to do if the larger bench of the Supreme Court stands by the verdict of the three-member bench, but its verdict is not implemented by the government. This should not happen; but if it does, the Constitution does take care of such a cavalier attitude; Article 190 mandates that "All executive and judicial authorities throughout Pakistan shall act in aid of the Supreme Court".
We hope that instead of stoking the fires by refusing to abide by what the Constitution has stipulated, the government would seize the moment and withdraw the controversial notifications. The issue is immensely crucial, demanding of the government to look at it in its wider perspective, rather than as a matter of ego for President Zardari or his legal aides.