WHAT’S with the plane journeys, rulers and upheavals in Pakistan’s politics? There is plenty of room for aerophobes in a country so used to holding grand airport receptions for leaders returning from exile and for a country so easily associated with a deliberate twin air crash in a distant land.

Away from the Twin Towers, there is this funny — and of course untrue — story about a Pakistani prime minister who landed in Islamabad after a foreign tour. He was told he had been fired by the boss, and had to take a taxi for his ‘unceremonious’ return home.

The story is about Muhammad Khan Junejo fired by Gen Zia in May 1988. Junejo threatened to go to the people’s court but could do little, his party having been hijacked by the powerful Zia-Nawaz Sharif combine.

Some two and half months later, a plane crash in Bahawalpur saw Gen Zia leaving behind a now reformed, pro-democracy Sharif to face the charges of a real hijacking 11 years later. In October 1999, Gen Pervez Musharraf won the air battle, his army managing to force-land his aircraft in Karachi.

The latest episode in Pakistan’s high-profile politics was not quite precipitated by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s plane ride to London last week. Bar the poetic nitty-gritty, the verdict was clear in the Supreme Court’s short order last month.

But just as the prime ministerial aircraft was taxiing for takeoff, the arrival of the SC’s detailed judgment added some interesting detail to an affair that had threatened to outlast the patience of Pakistanis. The 24-year-old taxi joke has resurfaced amid all these cries for saving the country one more time.

Prime Minister Gilani is no Gen Musharraf who had at his command a whole army to ensure a quiet, uncomplicated coup. Even if some well-placed gentleman in the army by chance happens to know the name of Gilani’s favourite pet, that doesn’t quite guarantee the struggling prime minister a safe new landing in Pakistani politics.

The problem: nor is Gilani a Junejo. He has his party firmly by his side and has a president known to not ditch his friends. The duo’s resolve is expressed in their vow to fight it out.

They draw their strength from their party’s presence in the assemblies and in the federal and provincial governments. After the moral and legal options have been exhausted they are still left with plenty in their political armoury to continue to press on with their case. Or so they think.

The PPP’s argument is focused on southern Punjab. President Asif Zardari categorically links Prime Minister Gilani’s troubles with a thrust for a Seraiki province.

Gilani himself appears to have put his faith in the Multan flyovers, the metaphor through which he has sought to connect his — and his family’s and to a large extent his party’s — politics in Punjab with the future. This is a bridge mainly of PPP’s making but others have, willy-nilly, come to it since then and we could be in for a real scramble here.

Last week, the Punjab Assembly unanimously passed two resolutions for the establishment of two new provinces: Janoobi Punjab and Bahawalpur. These are signs of the inevitable and it is only a matter of time before Punjab is divided.

The resolutions are essentially a build-up to general elections before an earnest remapping of territory is undertaken. With the division being a foregone conclusion, the race is now on for who contributes how much. If the PPP took the lead, the PML-N, too, is very much in the frame with some clever politics.

The N-League readily declared the passing of the resolutions a victory for the party and this claim was backed by an argument that made sense. On the basis of its numerical strength, it was able to thwart attempts by the PPP-PML-Q alliance to get a similar resolution about the creation of a Janoobi Punjab approved by the provincial assembly earlier.

Prime Minister Gilani has time and again said he wanted to have a Seraiki province during the current term of the assemblies. He has an impossible mountain before him. The PML-N has the numbers in the Punjab Assembly which holds the constitutional key to the new provinces.

By passing the resolution at a time of their choice and by creating the Bahawalpur issue, the Sharifs have shown their power.

They are in no hurry whatsoever to divide Punjab and their next target is to ensure a large enough presence in the next assembly that, among other things, would ensure that it is them which appear to give the people in southern Punjab the autonomy they are demanding.

The southerners cannot have it on their own and, in the current scheme of things, they are dependent on the upper Punjab districts to give them their province. The PML-N is now keen to flaunt its support in upper Punjab and tie it to their campaign in the southern parts of the province.

It is going to woo the people in southern Punjab as a party which could give these areas support from the upper districts they so desperately need to form their separate entity. This is what the constitution says, even though ideally this decision should rest with the areas which are calling for a division and not with those a division is sought from.

Just the opposite, the PPP is going to run a new-province campaign in the run-up to the election, at the same time trying to capture some seats in central and upper Punjab. Both the PPP and PML-N are primarily going to run two separate campaigns in Punjab as both approach a division of the province from their own vantage points.

Politically, two — three if you include Bahawalpur — Punjabs have already emerged on the map. Under the force of two major parties, other players such as the PTI will find it difficult to stay out of the debate for long.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.