The “make-or-break” meeting between the government’s two main coalition leaders Pakistan Muslim League (PML)-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday at Zardari House in Islamabad spanned three rounds and lasted six hours, including a one-to-one session.
Yet the two leaders decided to hold another marathon session on Wednesday to resolve the contentious issues, primarily concerning the reinstatement of the unjustly deposed higher judiciary, impeachment of the President, and restoration of the 1973 Constitution to its pre-October 12, 1999 position. After Tuesday’s meeting, however, the spokesmen of the two parties, or their respective aides who had attended the meeting, in their media interviews sounded upbeat about the first three rounds. 
According to them, the two leaders had almost reached consensus on restoring the judiciary and impeaching the President, and they just wanted to finalize modalities for the purpose with two of their other, smaller coalition partners, the Awami national Party (ANP) leader Asfandyar Wali and Jamiat-Ulema-e- Islam (JUI) leader Maulana Fazalur Rehman, as well as members of parliament from Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Given that, Zardari and Sharif were joined by the leaders of ANP and JUI and parliamentary members from FATA during the Wednesday round of the meeting. Besides expanding the consultative process, the Tuesday meeting also decided to get in touch with Independent Members of National Assembly (MNA). It was, therefore, clear that the coalition partners were aiming to secure the parliamentary majority required for impeaching the controversially elected President General (Redt) Pervez Musharraf.
If they are able to achieve this target, then the issue of restoration of judiciary can be easily sorted out—since the whole question is that of some sixty unjustly deposed judges of the higher courts, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, taking oath from a President that is elected through the due process of law.
But impeaching President Musharraf is also a challenge that cannot be easily tackled. Both ANP and JUI leaders have expressed their reservations. It is true that Mr Zardari has indicated several times the PPP-led government’s readiness to impeach the President. However, the ground reality as well as popular perception speaks volumes of the government’s behind-the-scene wheeling-dealings with the Musharraf-led Establishment.
It is only the PML-N leadership that has had a categorical stand on the restoration of the judiciary under the Bhurban Accord in March this year through a parliamentary declaration, and the impeachment of Musharraf through voting in a joint session of the National Assembly and the Senate.
It was in May that the PML-N withdrew its ministers from the Federal government. Even though Nawaz Sharif was disqualified from contesting the by-elections in June, his brother Shahbaz Sharif contested these polls, won unopposed, and became the Chief Minister of the Punjab province. Leaving aside the principled stand the PML-N leadership has taken on the issue of judiciary’s reinstatement, president’s impeachment, and restoration of 1973 constitution, Mr. Sharif simultaneously wants to keep the government in Punjab.
As for Mr. Zardari, despite agreeing with the PML-N leader in March to restore judiciary through a parliamentary resolution, the PPP co-chairman does not want to have confrontation with President Musharraf, fearing that he may dismiss the PPP-led government by using his discretionary constitutional power of dismissing an elected government under Article 58-2/b of the Constitution. He cannot afford confrontation with a president who neither the army nor the United States wants humiliated.
It is also a fact that since taking over power in March, the PPP leadership in the government has not done anything to provide relief to the people. Be it the recurrent hike in petrol prices, the consistently falling value of the rupee, the galloping rise in the prices of basic commodities, the worsening security quagmire in the country—the list of the government’s mismanagement of the country’s political, economic and security affairs is long enough to dissuade it from making any courageous move, such as restoring higher judiciary or impeaching the President. 
There is also this issue of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), which guarantees immunity to Mr Zardari and his un-elected but very powerful aides such as Prime Minister’s Advisor on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik from being prosecuted on several charges of corruption. The NRO was part of the deal that late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto made with General Musharraf before coming to Pakistan last year. She may not have survived, but NRO and its implications continue to haunt her party and the politics of Pakistan.
Probably that is why the PPP leadership has been trying to buy time, drag the process of resolving the most contentious issues with the aim of saving its coalition arrangement with the PML-N.   For instance, on the eve of the Sharif-Zardari meeting on Tuesday, PPP floated the option of Musharraf seeking a vote of confidence from the current parliament, which was elected duly in the February elections.
President Musharraf’s attorneys, Malik Qayyum and Sharifuddin Pirzada, had given an assurance to the Supreme Court last year that he would get a fresh vote of confidence from new parliament after the 2008 elections. On the basis of the assurance, the apex court had allowed the announcement of presidential election results.
Through this way the PPP might be hoping to avoid impeaching the President, which neither the army nor the Americans may desire, and yet keep its coalition partnership with PML-N continue. The ruling party in the Centre has adopted the same tactic on the judicial issue, contending that it agrees in principle with the PML-N on the issue, but only disagrees with it on the modalities for the purpose.
The PPP legal team led by Farooq Naik, another un-elected but powerful member of the Cabinet, had come up with a Constitutional Package—as another bid to but time on the issue of restoring the higher judiciary—in which, apart from the matter of re-instating judges, issues such as removal of Article 58-2/b and a host of other amendments in the original Constitution of 1973 were to be tackled through parliamentary debate. After Tuesday’s meeting, it wad reported that consensus between the two coalition partners on implementing parts of the package, including the removal of article 58-2/b had been achieved.
However, it is true that before the meeting between the two leaders began on Tuesday, the expectations were that it would be a make-or-break meeting. For before the talks, Mr Sharif had held a joint session of the Central Working Committee and parliamentary group. Afterwards, he informed the media that his meeting with the PPP leader would be “decisive. On July 16, the PML-N leader had also written a letter to Mr Zardari, asking him to immediately convene a parliamentary session to restore the deposed Supreme Court judges. “I have also said that we should impeach the dictator who twice violated the constitution and committed high treason," he said. "If there is no progress then we will have to take some decision,” Mr Sharif was reported as saying.
The PPP leadership, for its part, was also ready for the possible failure of the meeting with Mr Sharif. Mr Zardari had met with his close aides, the members of his kitchen cabinet, and discussed a line of action to be followed in the event of PML-N deciding to withdraw support for the coalition government and sit in the opposition.
However, from the two-day parleys between the two coalition partners, and the inclusion of ANP and JUI leaders as well as FATA members of parliament in the meeting on the second day, it was clear that all of the ruling parties, whether the PPP in the Centre, the PML-N in the Punjab, or the ANP in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), were interested in letting their coalition linger on for some more time, without going for a head-on collusion with the Musharraf-led Establishment, which is still backed by the United States.
Supposing even if the coalition partners were to agree on impeaching President Musharraf, who left the country on Wednesday for a visit to China to participate in the inaugural ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing, the question will remain how to do it and when to do it. If the process for the purpose was to begin from motions being tabled in provincial assemblies first, before the holding of a joint session of parliament, then we are talking about months.
Even if the impeachment move is made in a joint session of parliament, what is the guarantee that all of the PPP members of parliament, the highly unreliable elected members of parliament from FATA, an untrustworthy leader like Fazalur Rehman and ANP that is hands-in-glove with the Americans will vote for the move? There are spoilers like Rehman Malik and Farooq Naik in the PPP ranks and known for calling the shots in an otherwise popularly elected government who, with all of their overt and overt clout in the party can sabotage the impeachment bid.
Since balloting for the purpose will be secret, the move, instead of impeaching the President, may end up strengthening him further. Even otherwise, the NROed leadership of the PPP cannot be fully trusted on the matter. If it is really in collusion with the Establishment, as part of the deal which was guaranteed by no less power that the United States, then it may behind-the-scene can, in fact, ask some confidantes among the PPP MNAs and Senators to actually vote against the impeachment of President Musharraf.
In fact, Musharraf’s continued stay in power provides the only common ground for both the PML-N and PPP to stay in coalition. The danger is that before the PPP sincerely joins hands with the PML-N and other coalition partners to get rid of Musharraf, the latter might pre-empt this move by dismissing the PPP government. After all, the latter, through its utterly disappointing track record in the past few months of its rule, has left enough grounds for Musharraf to re-assert. In recent weeks, he seems to have re-energized, after a couple of months of hibernation. Out of desperation, and due to his known lust for power, Musharraf can do anything to survive.
    The principal challenge before PPP and the PML-N leaders is how to keep their coalition while continuing to disagree on contentious issues such as the restoration of judiciary and impeaching the president. Both Zardari and Sharif want their respective governments to continue, and, unfortunately, the only common ground for them is Musharraf’s continued stay in power.
In sum, survival is what the coalition partners seem to be aiming at, by holding one parley after another after a gap of few weeks or a month or so. In the mean time, however, the country is gripped by continuingly increasing level of political uncertainty and security predicament.