Good-bye, Frankenstein

ISLAMABADâ€"It was unnatural. Disparate entities, cobbled together to make up one monster of a coalition. The country had never quite seen anything like it.

Three parties that essentially hated each other. Not just enmity between individuals but an abhorrence for basic ideologies as well. And a bloody history to boot. Soon, a fourth group from a fringe on the right joined up as well. This was the stuff Greek tragedies are made out of. You knew things would get messy. The big questions were how and when.

There was an obvious answer to this question: differences over the restoration of the judges. Even before the February 18th elections, the PPP had been skirting unequivocal statements on the restoration. But, to be fair, the first time the PPP and the PML-N expressed a wish to work together was the Charter of Democracy of October, 2006, where the judges did figure in the declaration: “The recommendations for appointment of judges to superior judiciary shall be formulated through a commission, which shall comprise of the following: i. The chairman shall be a chief justice, who has never previously taken oath under the PCO.

This was before last year’s dismissal of Iftikhar Chaudhry. He was, in other words, the sort of person the two parties did not take kindly to.

Fast forward to February 18th, leaving out the lifetimes that encompassed the lawyers’ movement and the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto.