ISLAMABAD - Salman Masood - Last year, around this time, the Nawaz government was on tenterhooks. Imran Khan’s sit-in was going nowhere but it wasn’t letting the government move anywhere either. The military, ever the final arbiter, saw the pendulum swing in its favour (again) — the army chief was on the ascendant — and many had wished for it to redraw the political equation. Fast forward to now and there has been quite a reversal. Nawaz Sharif has managed to survive — despite what some analysts have described as a pyrrhic escape — the political challenge.
Imran Khan has been undone, partly by the domestic troubles and partly by political miscalculations. The momentum of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has been lost, its juggernaut has come to a grinding halt. Imran now himself concedes that elections would now take place in 2018 and he will divert his attention to improving Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
From the biggest threat that could send the government packing, Imran and his party have been reduced to the usual troublemakers. Khan has a new trick up his sleeve, though. The KP government now intends to start opposing the CPEC project, even going to extent of threatening to stop the land acquisition in the province. However, such a course of opposition risks a confrontation not only with the political government but also with the military, which is equally invested in Chinese projects in the country.
For Nawaz, the biggest challenge remains the government itself. After having a breather from the pounding of political opposition, he has to ensure performance and improve governance. Within the ruling party, the internal fissures remain evident but not wide enough to cause a deadlock. The local body polls have only reinforced the earlier political permutations and no major upsets are expected.
The changed political environment has added to the confidence of the prime minister. Increasingly confident and exuding a self-assured air, Nawaz has changed his tack. The jaunts to different parts of the country have multiplied and government’s media managers are keen to portray the premier to be as agile and quick in action as was the hallmark of the army chief. 
In the battle of optics, both civilians and the military appear to be competing with equal alacrity. It is also a measure of the prevalent civil-military divide.
Government ministers have repeated ad nauseam that they are on the same page with the military but it is clearly an eyewash. The military has not bothered to issue similar statements. The military is least interested to even give a semblance of harmony with the civilians. Instead, it keeps on exhorting the government to improve governance and take political ownership of the effort against militancy. With differences persisting over the fundamentals, both sides remain unable to move forward or step back from their entrenched positions. It is a stalemate that is expected to drag on till late 2017.
The army chief, Gen Raheel Sharif, has had his high and now seems to be on a diminishing curve. Overexposure in the media has now started to seep in. Gen Sharif’s visit to the United States lacked glittery media headlines and was short of deliverables. While meeting with US Vice President was dubbed as the ‘crowning moment’, the foreign sojourns have achieved another feat ( if the military spokesperson’s words have to be taken at face value): the first Asian to be awarded Brazil’s Order of Merit award. But perhaps it is an unremarkable accolade that the military’s media machine has taken a pride in. In essence, it means little and perhaps shows how the preoccupations within the corridors of power have shifted. 
The advent of winter, this time, has come with a cooling of political temperatures also. For the rambunctious television news networks, which thrive on controversy and sensationalism, it can be a terribly boring time.