Friday that it is likely to be a limited exercise: “Both sides value a joint strategy in certain high-profile constituencies, for example, where PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, its de facto prime ministerial candidate Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed are contesting. But a serious problem faced by the PML-N and the PPP was what to do with their nominees, who had been given tickets for standing with them in hard times. They do not want to annoy such ticket holders.”

In an editorial on Sunday, The Daily Times noted: before lifting the emergency on December 15 (Saturday) President Pervez Musharraf — now civilian but armed with the provisions of the emergency he imposed on November 3 — has promulgated ordinances to protect the changes he has brought about in the judiciary. The set of ordinances amending the Constitution makes sure that the lifting of the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) that he had imposed together with emergency does not automatically restore the dismissed judges.” So, with emergency gone: “The quarrel has shifted from people-versus-Musharraf to a more complicated popular self-reprimand. The press is writing opinion against the political parties who have succumbed to the seduction of elections. The lawyers are rebuking their fellow-lawyers for not boycotting the courts and for joining the post-PCO judiciary.”

Troika, reformed

In the December issue of Newsline, Zahid Hussain considers what the future could hold for Pakistan’s “chain-smoking” 14th chief of army staff,

General Ashfaq Kayani: “Analysts maintain that the army would continue to back him as a bridge between the armed forces and the future civilian government. But power could gravitate more towards General Kayani in the event of any political instability. The change of guard also signals the return of the troika rule that dominated the country’s politics in the 1990s. The political role of the military in the country’s power structure has already been formalised by Musharraf through the formation of the National Security Council. The Council includes the chiefs of the three services: the army, the navy and the air force. This will make General Kayani an important member of the power structure.”

Herald magazine, too, in its December issue wonders about General Kayani. Massoud Ansari reports that just a day before Musharraf stepped down as army chief, “when he called a conference of the corps commanders, rumours spread in the federal capital that the meeting had been called to replace the then vice chief of army staff, General Kayani, with someone more ‘trustworthy’.” Nonetheless, now that Kayani is army chief, writes Ansari, he’s “the strongest player on the political scene”: “Though at the moment it is not clear to what extent the views and visions of the two will converge, Kayani may have to end up playing the mediator between Musharraf and the political forces at some point.”

Death of an artist

There is shock at the mysterious death of Pakistan’s foremost living artist. Dawn reported: “Artist Abdul Mohammad Ismail, better known as Gulgee, wife Zareen Gulgee and a maidservant were found murdered in their Clifton residence on Wednesday afternoon.” The police said nothing of value appeared to be missing. According to The Daily Times, “Gulgee is particularly famous for his Islamic calligraphy and ‘action painting’ in which he freely applied colourful brushstrokes which turned into a symbol of strength, energy and power. He was a self-taught abstract and portrait painter and before 1959 also painted the Afghan royal family.”

In a week that ended Friday with a terrible suicide attack on a Peshawar mosque, there was also a rail tragedy. Fifty persons were killed and more than 200 injured when the Lahore-bound Karachi Express derailed near Sukkur. In an editorial Friday, The Daily Times demanded privatisation and better regulation of Pakistan Railways.

mini.kapoor@expressindia.com