A number of legal interventions are threatening to unleash unforeseen consequences for state and society in Pakistan.

The Supreme Court has ordered the PMLN government to register a case of treason against General (retd) Pervez Musharraf and prosecute him on a fast track basis. But it is a moot point whether, in principle, parliament and its administrative arm should have the right to make such a powerful determination or the SC may compel the government to do its bidding. Indeed, legal tradition holds that parliament makes laws, the executive or government upholds them by invoking prosecution and punishment, and the courts determine their application to subjects. In this case, the matter has been complicated by four countervailing factors. First, there seems to be a vested interest on the part of the SC to punish the man who rendered it impotent in the past. Second, there seems to be a vested interest on the part of the government not to destabilize civil-military relations and render it impotent in the future. Third, there seems to be a select application by the SC to the one person of General Musharraf rather than to the military coterie that made a collective decision and implemented it. Fourth, the SC is fixated on the mini-coup of November 3, 2007, rather than the major-coup of October 1999. In the past, it should be noted, the maximum intervention of the SC in such political matters was limited to a ruling on a specific reference before it by the government – as for example in the mid 1970s when the ZA Bhutto government applied to the SC to confirm the “treasonable” credentials of the National Awami Party before deciding to ban it.