Credit: Dawn.Com

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.

More: