This time around the long march aims to agitate for more than the restoration of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. The political future of PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and former Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif now depends on the success of the event.

In an address to a public meeting in Abottabad on Wednesday, Nawaz has claimed that the Zardari-led government is in a state of panic. ‘Pakistan is in the grip of the worst ever crisis. It is our responsibility to save Pakistan…I listened to Zardari for Pakistan's sake…[but] our government would have been in Punjab if we had made a deal,’ he said.

Dawn’s correspondent in Abottabad, Rashid Javed, tells Dawn.com that since Section 144 has not been imposed in NWFP, the rally went off smoothly and no arrests were made.

The situation in other parts of the country is a bit more tense. Section 144, which bans the gathering of more than four persons, has been imposed throughout the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. Reports are also coming in that the government has reportedly launched a countrywide crackdown on PML-N activists and lawyers. Raja Zafarul Haq, a senior PML-N leader, has been detained and leaders of the lawyers movement such as Aitzaz Ahsan are believed to have gone into hiding to avoid arrests.

The crackdown against PML-N activists and lawyers has not been widely protested. It remains to be seen whether the long march - that is expected to reach its climax on March 16, when protestors arrive in Islamabad - will be able to achieve its stated goal of mobilizing people in the name of democracy and an independent judiciary.

The fate of the long march is further complicated by the sporadic enforcement of Section 144 across Punjab. In Sahiwal, for example, District Nazim Sahiwal Hassan Nawaz Khan refused to impose Section 144 in the district. Meanwhile, Shahbaz successfully led a rally in Gujranwala, where SSP Civil Lines Gujranwala, Athar Waheed, refrained from arresting supporters of the PML-N.