FOUR years of the erstwhile ‘Mr Ten Per Cent’ and his protégés in power and a corruption scandal rocks the Supreme Court (SC). So unexpected is the political scene in Pakistan.

Will an allegedly errant son destroy the judge who managed to be resurrected twice — a miracle by any standards? It is perhaps too soon to say. At the moment, the chief justice (CJ) and the rest of the SC judges do not appear to be in any mood to back down. The contempt of court notice issued to Malik Riaz on Wednesday for his press conference a day earlier indicates this.

At the same time, most observers are agreed that the full court which has been called for today will in the most honoured tradition, Pakistani, repose confidence in its chief justice. In times of crises, leaders cover themselves with the cloak of legitimacy and wait for the storm to pass. But this may not be the end of the matter. The story has just begun and a number of factors will determine what its ‘logical end’ will be.

The first is going to be the wild card — Malik Riaz himself.

He has made some serious allegations, which have caused some damage, and some wild ones that have simply left people perplexed. However, he has threatened to spill more beans in the future and provided the beans are substantial, the damage can be immense.

But nothing is clear as to how much he will reveal.

Second, is the reaction of the legal community, aka the bar, which will continue to play an important role as it did from 2007 to 2009.

Though the Pindi bar moved in favour of the chief justice on Wednesday, most others are still to react. However, one can surmise that the scandal has not made all the lawyers too happy.

This much was also clear on Wednesday night when both Yasin Azad, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, and Vice Chairman Pakistan Bar Council Akhtar Hussain, argued in a talk show that it would be better if the SC passed the issue on to agencies set up for the purpose. (The importance of the legal community can be judged from the fact that the short order passed by the SC on Thursday asked the attorney general to get the scandal investigated as he saw fit.)

The meetings of these two bodies will in all probability take place soon and their reactions will shed some much-needed light on the future.

But those who feel that the bar may take a hostile stand cannot explain what may prompt these bodies to come out against the chief justice and force his resignation.

The third is the judiciary itself.

The million-dollar question that is being asked is whether or not the judiciary will turn against the chief justice if the scandal becomes too big. And the past precedent that is quoted here is of Sajjad Ali Shah who was forced out by his colleagues. But will the judges be encouraged or discouraged by the precedent they set?

If the chief justice is to be asked to leave after the allegations of a business tycoon, will it not encourage others to hurl allegations and make any SC judge controversial?

That this will be a consideration in the mind of those judges who are not avid CJ fans cannot be discounted. Critics can point out time and again that individuals should be differentiated from institutions but the treatment meted out to individuals impacts institutions. People within close ranks to protect their own because they know that they can be next.

This is why the military bid farewell to Musharraf gracefully and why people protested when prime ministers in Pakistan were shown the door for their alleged corruption; the latter weakened democratic/civilian institutions. The judges may well apply the same logic to the chief justice.

The fourth player to be watched is the political parties, which too have been circumspect so far. The PML-N and the PTI finally spoke up and chances are that they will continue to support the CJ.

But equally important will be the PPP. Though it has claimed to sit this round out, there is a niggling fear in Islamabad that it may jump the gun and file a reference against the CJ in the Supreme Judicial Council.

But will this send the CJ home? Not everyone agrees. Some feel it may well be the Musharraf moment — unite the lawyers and the opposition political parties behind the CJ.

In other words, the logical end to this crisis is none too clear. Too much has to be resolved before the ending can be written.

But those who feel that the CJ will end up going home need to consider two more factors.

This democratic interlude has so far stuck to one principle — that each one of the big players is untouchable and this includes the CJ as it does the prime minister, the president and the army chief.

This is why the report of the memo commission may have launched an unwarranted attack on Husain Haqqani but not the president who too was implicated earlier. This is why the prime minister sacks the defence secretary but he, or the president, do not touch the chief of army staff.

This is also why the CJ needs to survive. It stabilises the system by setting at least one golden rule — that the system has to continue along with its main players.

Second, if we all assume that the reason the CJ has been targeted is because he needs to be cut down to size, has the present crisis not achieved that already? More than one person, including talk show hosts who broke the story, have argued that the CJ’s strict stance against the military’s involvement in Balochistan has convinced the khaki-clad that he had to be stopped in his tracks.

The allegations by a controversial property tycoon have already diminished the aura of invincibility around the once untouchable chief justice. Is this not what most of his detractors would prefer — to a long-protracted battle, the end of which no one can predict.

A compromised bird in the hand is surely worth more than two in the bush. In any case, politics is more about murkiness than the black and white endings of fairytales.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Islamabad.