Source> Dawn
IF he shuts up, they shut up. It’s what it seems to come down to. Because there was, and remains, a bit of a mystery at the heart of the ouster. If it was about accountability, accountability was already dead. The London apartments are from the ’90s, as was everything directly against Zardari. In a decade of democracy, there’s nothing new that’s come up. The iqama is new, but the embarrassment of having to hang an ouster on it has forced attention away from it. If it was about the judiciary asserting its primacy, other recent events with the judiciary and among lawyers have demonstrated that it’s business as ugly usual. Sure, if you’re the PM, you’ve got to worry about the courts, but the courts don’t seem particularly keen on bringing the iron hammer of the law down in areas far and wide. If it was about the boys wanting to get their way, it wasn’t like anyone was stopping them from getting their way anyway. There’s nothing that Nawaz had actually won against them. And they had clearly figured out how to contain him. Better, then, to leave the dagger hanging above him than to plunge it in. From inside the system, Nawaz had an obvious interest in stability and continuity. From outside, you risk him becoming a loose cannon and keeping everything uncertain and unstable.