JUST when it looked like the political skies were clearing, the NRO saga is back with a bang. Prime Minister Gilani has been summoned once more to the Supreme Court on Feb 13, this time to face charges of contempt for not implementing in totality the NRO judgment of December 2009. Uncertainty and instability have become the political currency of choice of late, but the latest crisis is perhaps both the easiest to solve and the one holding the greatest danger.

Let’s start with the solution: the government could simply write the letter to Swiss authorities to re-establish the status of the Pakistani government as a party to the Swiss cases involving President Zardari. If the government were to do so, the NRO issue would likely fade away and the government could concentrate on its agenda of holding Senate elections, getting to the budget in June and then contemplating when to hold a general election. With even the prime minister’s lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, claiming in previous, more candid moments that writing the Swiss letter would not materially impact Mr Zardari’s presidency, the common-sense thing for the government to do would be to oblige the court. But for a government which has long preferred to respond politically to its legal woes, whether common sense will now be listened to is an open question. If the government does decide to contest the issue in the legal domain, its options are few. Other than an intra-court appeal asking that the contempt hearing on Feb 13 be deferred or set aside, Mr Ahsan will be hard-pressed to find a loophole for the prime minister to wriggle out through. And once the contempt proceedings begin, there’s little by way of argument that can be deployed to prevent or even delay the gavel from coming crashing down on Mr Gilani’s prime ministership. With 17 justices of the SC having already declared in December 2009 that the government must write the Swiss letter, it is virtually inconceivable that any bench of the court will at this stage find the NRO judgment was flawed somehow or that it erred in its instructions.

Much as the onus has come to fall on the government for implementing the NRO judgment, the court continues to heap pressure on the government in a manner that perhaps makes a confrontation inevitable. Two years of patience when it comes to seeing the NRO judgment implemented in totality has given way to an impatience that suggests only days or weeks are now left. A judiciary perceived to be in a selective hurry does not help the cause of national political stability.