The deposed chief justice of Pakistan has been restored, the opposition, notably the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, has called off the Long March, there is jubilation all round. What next?

In that question resides the devil. But let’s not undermine the moment. A victory has been scored, a wrong righted. That, in and of itself, is an achievement of which Pakistanis should be proud. The moment definitely belongs to all those who struggled to get the CJP restored.

Time is serial, though, and the moment is already history. That’s where the issue must go, beyond the person of the CJP to the institution of the judiciary and further on to the judiciary’s interaction with other institutions of state and society.

What the euphoria of the moment can afford to ignore, the sobriety of reflection over the future cannot. Consider specific evidence.

Exhibit A: Analysts, including former generals, have appeared on TV and praised the army for playing a positive role. One of the tribe, without any touch of irony, said that by streamlining democracy the army had reclaimed its prestige and shown that it would not intervene in politics.

But it did! That’s what its mediation was all about. True, it took the high tide of popular sentiment, but the fact that it had had to break the logjam between the two major political forces by weighing in means that, all said, it retains its arbitration role in the power structure of Pakistan. Even at the best of times for other institutions — and the army is just emerging from a long period of direct rule, trying hard to distance itself from its former chief’s legacy — it remains primus inter pares.

... contd.