Tyranny of good intentions

Yet, I feel almost embarrassed to say that the country's Opposition, and particularly Nawaz Sharif, seems to extend all niceties to the ruling party to the dismay of those who have struggled to have regime of rule of law established in this country. Nawaz Sharif seems to be a character out of Shakespearean play who is torn between doing the right thing but who has all the ambivalence to do it in the manner expected by conventional wisdom or practices. I am reminded of Macbeth: To go in Opposition stricto sensu or not is the question? I fully understand that given his own most congenial personality which is inclined to charitable and gracious mannerism, he is reluctant to perform the part that as Opposition he must play. In many addresses and interviews after saying that he is disappointed in Zardari reneging on three crucial undersigning with him, he still hopes that he has nothing but good wishes for the federal government and for Zardari! It is clear that these two sentiments are directly in opposition to each other and could be logically said to be mutually self-destructive.
As an Opposition it is the foremost constitutional duty of its leader to offer an alternative to the people of the country. It is a politically established doctrine, enunciated by such celebrated British authorities as Gladstone or Walter Bagehot that there has to be an effort to take over the government should the Opposition succeed. What is more demoralising for the people to comprehend is that such graces are being extended personally to President Zardari which is simply staggering in naïveté. From Shakespearean plays one has as to keep the role portrayed by Brutus: "Not that I love Caesar less but that I love Rome more." Mian Sahib should keep in focus that whatever makes him beholden to Zardari he has a higher and a more sacred duty to Pakistan and its 165 million people.
Indeed people have now openly begun to suggest as much, in my view wrongly, that this "opposition" to Zardari is really a sham. I have heard some prominent leaders say so on TV interviews and talk shows that were the PML-N Opposition fundamentally genuine, and then there is no question of there being a "coalition" in the Punjab province.
I think the real test of Mian Sahib is fast approaching that he has to decide on the right course of action for the masses he commands. I hope that for the sake of the millions of people in the country, and particularly in the Punjab he acts judiciously with appropriate counsel.
Despite clear and unambiguous promises to withdraw the 17th Amendment, and restore judiciary, nothing has taken place. I also think that in the foreseeable future it will not occur either. For if the17th Amendment goes, so does the bar injected in the constitution by Musharraf also goes with that mandates twice premiership being an embargo for the third time. I cannot see that the president will easily agree to this scenario in which he has an unshackled Nawaz Sharif directly opposing him in the Parliament.
As such I would submit to the Opposition to perform its time cherished role in accordance with the established norms of this system. What is now happening in the country is in a way dereliction of one's duty in Opposition; it has created in a way an analogous sedition towards propriety and the exigencies of the time. It is artificial and creating manifestly a kind of oligarchy that is gravely threatening to the democracy itself.
The incumbent political elite is not just intellectually and morally bankrupt, it is also devoid of ideas and is slaves in thought to outside influence or to those that it professes to have replaced.
It is beyond my analytical skills to put it in any other way except to say that such good intentions notwithstanding, such a pursuit in politics are novel phenomena. Regrettably this is bound to create more difficulties for the country and indeed for PML-N and Mian Sahib himself than are right now needed.
The writer is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, attorney-at-law (US), barrister-at-law (UK) and professor at Harvard University