The brewing disturbances in Pakistan People’s Party-Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) coalition will leave no alternative with the PPP but to deal with President Pervez Musharaff, the Guardian reported.

“Both Washington and London are pushing the PPP to do a deal with the President. If it did, the PPP knows that it would pay a high price for acting as the fig leaf for his continued misrule. Washington knows this too, but for short-term gain it is prepared to sacrifice a party that is pro-western, liberal and national on the altar of its fight against Al Qaeda.”

The non-acceptance of the resignations of nine ministers of Nawaz Sharif’s party is a sign of the gravity of the situation facing the winners of the February 18 elections. The issue dividing Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif is, at face value, a technical one, it said.

Both men are committed to restoring the judges. While Sharif wants them restored by an executive order of the prime minister, Zardari prefers the parliamentary tools of a constitutional amendment, it added.

The dispute, which threatens the coalition only months after it crushingly defeated the presidential party, is anything but technical because at stake is the ousting of the president. An executive order would have dramatic effects.

It would rightly declare the state of emergency the president imposed on November 3 illegal, setting the constitutional clock back to November 2. Musharraf’s “dodgy re-election” as president would again be up for legal challenge, as would the amnesty on corruption charges arranged for the Bhutto couple. Loyalist justices Musharraf installed after November would be sacked and their decisions annulled.

Zardari’s constitutional amendment, on the other hand, would implicitly recognise that some of the changes to the constitution after November 3 were legal.

The amendment would be passed by a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament, a way of loudly proclaiming the restoration of the chief justice, while quietly abandoning Iftikhar Chaudhry’s claim for his old job back. Without Sharif’s party, the Pakistan People’s party would have no alternative but to return to the president’s fold, the editorial said.