The stage is set. President Pervez Musharraf has summoned the National Assembly session for March 17. This comes amidst high drama over who could be Pakistan’s next prime minister. On Sunday, in the “Murree Summit Declaration”, PML’s Nawaz Sharif and PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari agreed to form coalitions at the centre and in Punjab. They also agreed on the restoration of judges to their pre-November 3 status, saying a resolution to this effect would be passed within 30 days of the formation of the federal government (Dawn, March 10.) (The “summit” bred its own controversies, most notably with the absence of Makhdoom Amin Fahim, senior vice-president of the PPP, who till recently was believed to be the obvious choice to be prime minister.)

In The Friday Times, Najam Sethi called the accord a “remarkable development”. He wrote, “In some ways, the greater maturity has been shown by Nawaz Sharif while the greater courage has been shown by Asif Zardari.” Sharif resisted demands on his party to boycott the elections, says Sethi, and he has now dropped plans to immediately put parliament in confrontation with the president and the post-November 3 judiciary. Zardari has, in turn, stayed with Benazir Bhutto’s plan for transition to democracy. But has Musharraf made peace with the transition? “This reckless and arrogant attitude has to change. He must learn to zip up and take a back seat, otherwise he is bound to step on the people’s mandate and bruise the egos of the new parliamentarians, thereby precipitating another confrontation. At any rate, the PMLN and PPP will obtain a two-thirds majority in the senate elections next year and parliament will become strong enough to uncontroversially strip him of his extraordinary powers or send him packing if he remains obstreperous. The time will be right too because a Democratic administration in Washington may not be as enamoured of him as the Bush regime is today.”

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