THE chaos of the past several weeks, triggered by the fast-approaching retirement date of the chief justice of Pakistan on Oct 25 and concerns that his successor may take decisions signalling the beginning of the end of the hybrid government, looks like it may have peaked.

Whether these concerns are valid or whether it is the paranoia of a set-up that lacks mass support, legitimacy and credibility, due to an election where the overall result may not have reflected the will of those who voted, is difficult to say.

What is clear is that there would be few examples of a country amending its constitution to address such concerns pinned to an inability to predict the behaviour or actions of just over a dozen men and a woman. Many government politicians have described the toing and froing of the past weeks as the ‘beauty of democracy’. I humbly disagree.

Let me tell you why. By the time you read these lines, either the so-called ‘consensus’ (with the JUI-F and some smaller players) would have resulted/ or would be set to soon result in the passage of a constitutional amendment, clipping the wings of the judiciary; or, what Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari called the “brutal majority with their extra numbers”, would have manifested itself with the same result. You’d agree such statements have no ‘beauty’ about them.

There is always the third possibility that all attempts to break the impasse would have failed, stripping the hybrid buffer and........

© Dawn