The constitutional package unveiled by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) will not end the unconstitutional Nov. 3, 2007 actions of the then army chief Pervez Musharraf but it does include some “attractions” for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to cut the president to size. The two major political parties may agree to pass the package or the 18th Amendment to completely disarm Musharraf, making him a mere figurehead, but there are no signs that they will not continue to lock horns on the question of the restoration of the pre-Nov. 3 superior judiciary. Background discussions with leaders of the two parties point to a dim possibility of a partial agreement on the constitutional package. “One prompt way forward could be that the two key parties, supported by their allies, strip Musharraf of all the discretionary powers, turning him into a just ceremonial head, and leave the contentious causes to be approved by parliament at a later stage after they iron out their differences,” one of them said. The package was disclosed before the PPP Central Executive Committee on a day when the lawyers-judges movement staged a show of power by taking deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary to Faisalabad to address the first convention. Not only the leaders of PPP and the PML-N but others also agree that the new package will not lead to an end to the pro-judges movement and will not create political stability. The package has thrown the ball in the court of Musharraf to decide whether he wants to become another powerless (president) Fazal Elahi Chaudhry or Rafiq Tarar or would prefer to go home with dignity. A legal expert said it was not mandatory for parliament to pass the 18th Amendment in its totality. The legislature can approve some amendments and drop a few others for the time being, till a consensus is evolved among the parliamentary parties, he added. A PPP stalwart said it would not be easy for the PML-N to reject the package in toto because Nawaz Sharif had always been demanding that the president should be a titular head without discretionary powers and this was what the package proposed. “If the PML-N sincerely wants to gun for Musharraf, it would join hands with the PPP to make the president irrelevant. When his powers to appoint the chiefs of the armed forces, the chief election commissioner, the attorney general and the auditor general, to dissolve the National Assembly or to appoint provincial governors, are taken away he will become a nobody, sitting in the presidential palace,” the PPP leader said. The PML-N hard-line, however, persists even after the unwrapping of the package. “We have repeatedly asserted that the restoration of the deposed judges has nothing to do with any constitutional package as the two are separate things,” a PML-N leader remarked. __
