THANKS to the frequent distractions offered by Pakistan’s ever-changing political discourse, it is easy to lose orientation while navigating the country’s ongoing social crises.

Therefore, as our various institutional and political leaders continue fabricating fresh and fantastical reasons to justify the patently unjustifiable, it is important to once again invite attention to the fact that the ongoing stand-off between the ruling parties and the PTI would have been largely addressed had all concerned institutions simply taken the legal route on the elections matter.

Unfortunately, the narrative that has gained currency in some quarters is that implementing the Constitution is conditional on the ruling parties’ grievances with the judiciary being addressed to their satisfaction. This is a problematic and untenable position to take, especially in a country perpetually on the verge of returning to totalitarianism.

We now have a situation where the chief justice is making headlines for merely stating the obvious: that the implementation and enforcement of the Constitution is a duty, not a choice.

The Supreme Court may not be without blame. Its jurisprudence in recent years has left many clamouring for an ‘evening’ of its scales. It has stepped beyond its mandate; most remarkably by ‘rewriting’ Article 63A and, more recently, by rendering a law ineffectual even before its enactment.

The court has been embroiled in needless controversy because its top justices appear to assert themselves through discretionary powers rather than by reinforcing the moral authority of their institution as a whole.

Still, none of this justifies what is expected to happen next Monday, when a second extension of the Constitution’s 90-day deadline for elections to the dissolved assemblies lapses without as much as a ballot paper being printed for the exercise.

Have the country’s laws been rendered so toothless that they will now be tossed aside when they prove too inexpedient for the powers that be? Should we not have expected a civilian government, comprising the leaders of some of the country’s largest and oldest political parties, to behave with more restraint and foresight than the failed military strongmen that have come before them?

How can one expect stability to return to a country where the rules upholding its political order are being subverted on a whim? The PDM project should not continue to hold the electoral process hostage. It has been amply warned.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2023