The President and Prime Minister are playing strange games with the people of Pakistan and in the process making a mockery of democracy. The President having taken a confrontationist posture with the judiciary, the Prime Minister seems to want to stay alongside the President, but also show that he is committed to an independent judiciary and rule of law and the Constitution. So he followed the suspension of the Presidential notification by the three-member SC bench, by declaring that while there can be wrong decisions, his government will accept the SCs interpretation on the issue. He also went on to make a strange declaration that the judges issue was not like Kashmir. Now what could he have meant? That Kashmir was beyond resolution, despite UNSC resolutions? Or that the judges issue did not have the same relevancy as Kashmir for Pakistan, despite the fact that on this issue hinges the future of an independent judiciary and the supremacy of the Constitution? Either way, it was irrelevant to make such a comparison.The fact of the matter is that the Prime Minister needs to step in to put an end to these games being played from the Presidency simply to protect one man and his alleged corruption. Simply using the Attorney General to convey messages to the CJ is insufficient, even though it is a recognition that tensions have to be defused. Otherwise, institutions are being destroyed, the Constitution undermined, the country destabilised and people pitted against each other burning effigies and resorting to violence. Even the leader of the friendly PML-N opposition, Mian Nawaz Sharif, who had become almost an apologist for the President in the vain hope of providing the system some stability, has finally reached the end of his tether and been compelled to declare that Zardari was the biggest threat to democracy. It is time now for saner voices to prevail and take the lead and never has the country needed its Prime Minister to show some sanity and some mettle in the face of deliberate confrontations being hatched in the Presidency. The Judiciary must be allowed to play its due role and assert its independence. Things cannot go back to being what they were before the nations movement for the restoration of the Chief Justice. The dynamics of inter-institutional responsibility and interaction have altered and no ruler can bypass legal norms and procedures in the course of governance. This is what is actually troubling the present leadership of the country. The nation is paying the price for the leaderships refusal to comprehend the new ground realities of Pakistan, its people and the essential pillars of the Judiciary and the media.