ON Thursday the country once again appeared to be headed towards a nerve-racking crisis. Pakistan’s worst-kept secret was out in the open: the government had no control over the army and ISI. The awkward truth came out late Wednesday night when the government bluntly informed the Supreme Court that it had no operational control over the army and its intelligence wing. In fact, replies given to the Supreme Court in the ‘memogate’ affair had already indicated the deepening distrust between the army and the civilian set-up. While the government pleaded that the PML-N chief’s petition be dismissed, the army and ISI were keen on a thorough judicial probe — with motives that can only be guessed. On Thursday, the prime minister, underscoring the supremacy of parliament, told the National Assembly in categorical terms that all institutions of the state were answerable to the people’s representatives. Speaking at an earlier function at the Pakistan National Council of Arts the same day, he minced no words in telling his audience that conspiracies were afoot to derail democracy. The breach between the army and the government appears to have widened to dangerous levels.

While even at this stage it is premature to assert that extra-constitutional means of removing the government are in the works, it would nevertheless be useful to recall that the army has usurped power four times in Pakistan’s history to ‘save the nation’. Each time the ‘saviour’ departed from the scene, he left behind him a greater mess. The truth given by the government to the SC and Mr Gilani’s warning of threats to democracy can turn out to be a game-changer. But this can only be so if pro-establishment elements, including certain political parties and sections of the media, realise the dire consequences of extra-constitutional moves in the past and the damage caused as a result.

Meanwhile, the current crisis is not just about the so-called memo and whether the latter was sanctioned by senior government members, as indicated by the military. No doubt, if such claims are verified the perpetrators must be taken to task. The larger issue, however, remains that of the undefined role of the security establishment in matters of governance as well as in shaping the country’s security and foreign policies. The question that has never been answered is: are the security agencies truly under an elected government or, as indicated by the prime minister, are they a state within a state? Whatever the truth may be, we hope that better sense prevails as unconstitutional moves in this context can have devastating consequences for the country.