THE prime minister has been instructed by the Supreme Court to write to the Swiss authorities by March 21.

While the more important minds involved, the parties, the lawyers and the judiciary may know exactly what they are aiming at, TV anchors, ‘experts’ and people at large are somewhat confused.

The only aspect of the issue everyone agrees with is that like the memo scandal, this is the spiciest piece of news on the nation’s television screens. Unfortunately, after the last adjournment of the case for a period longer than scandal-hungry Pakistanis would have preferred, the spice appears to be getting diluted.

But all is not lost yet. Loud and eager talk-show hosts are still playing guessing games with their unpaid guests. ‘Will he be convicted or not, what will happen if he is?’ and if someone dares to differ, the bold anchor will shout, ‘of course he should be convicted!’ Similarly, there will be questions of ‘will he be jailed, will he continue to function as the prime minister from his jail cell?’

The list of silly questions and even sillier answers will be endless. Except for rating-watchers, hardly anyone will gain from the proceedings or the answers.

The fact of the matter is that whatever happens to the prime minister is really irrelevant. Even if he is convicted, it will establish only one thing: that non-implementation of a Supreme Court order results in punishment for the offender.

The real issue will still remain, Section 248 will not disappear. ‘Prime ministergate’ is not really about this section of the constitution. It is only about the disobedience of an order issued by the Supreme Court. The naughty section will continue to beg interpretation. And unless it is ‘duly’ interpreted, the ultimate could happen: the current or future prime minister starts to write the letter, and the president (everything is possible here) files a case against him for the treasonous act of violating Section 248 of the constitution.

In Pakistan, we do not like objective, detached commentary; we find it boring. So the experts, if they want to be called to express their views on the show again, must strongly express an opinion favouring one ‘camp’ or the other. In this case, one camp says that Section 248 gives immunity to the president from criminal prosecution, including continuity of such prosecution.

The opposite camp says that the prime minister should either have blindly obeyed the order of the Supreme Court or approached the latter for a review to clarify whether he should ‘really’ write the pesky letter or interpret the order in some other way.

The interesting part is that neither camp is claiming that the section does not give immunity to the president. It would appear that the order is more important than interpretation of this particular section of the constitution.

Strange and complicated logic? A little too sophisticated for the ordinary citizens of the state? A little too removed from the everyday problems of poverty, loadshedding, inflation, delayed justice and other issues of the ordinary people? But then, is not everything a little bit too complicated and overly sophisticated in Pakistan?