ANOTHER prime minister, another walk of shame. On Aug 27, Raja Pervez Ashraf will have to make the short walk from the gates of the Supreme Court to inside a courtroom where he will likely be charged with contempt of court unless his government writes the so-called Swiss letter. And therein lies the rub: what the court would regard as a walk of shame — a second prime minister hauled before it for explicitly rejecting an explicit court order — the PPP will regard as a walk of defiance: another jiyala ready to sacrifice all for his leader, Asif Ali Zardari. When the Justice Asif Khosa-led bench held out an olive branch to the government at the last hearing, anyone desperate to see an end to the mindless saga of the Swiss letter would have hoped that the government would reciprocate somehow. But even in that moment of desperate hope, there would have been an insistent doubt: had the PPP ever been inclined to allow the letter to be written, it would not have waited for one prime minister to be knocked out. In fact, with the president himself still not directly in danger of being dislodged from office, it seemed more than likely the government would accept whatever fate the SC has in store for its latest prime minister.

And so it appears to have almost come to pass. The PPP yesterday threw yet more diversions in the SC’s path, filing review petitions against the striking down of the Contempt of Court Act, 2012 and against the order requiring Prime Minister Ashraf to explain what his government is going to do about the letter. None of these will likely keep the court at bay for long. But then perhaps all the PPP is trying to do is buy time so that the fast-winding-down election clock comes into play and the party can pull the trigger on an on-schedule election while still hanging on to its second prime minister from the same parliament. Failing that, it will just as likely have a third prime minister elected and limp on to its ultimate goal of an election after parliament completes its five-year term.

Curiously, perhaps the PPP will be helped in achieving its goal by the court itself. The wheels of justice do take some time to move, even when they are moving quickly — the months-long disqualification process of Yousuf Raza Gilani being a very relevant example. If the same schedule is adhered to this time, Prime Minister Ashraf may have just received an early Eid present: many more weeks, and perhaps months, in office.