This is with reference the recent immature outbursts of our political elite, whom neither time has reformed, nor age made a little more sober. The world has changed with a virtual revolution in information technology. News is easily accessible to the people today, the media having punched so many holes in the secretive lives of the rulers that nothing is a secret from the public. In Pakistan, though, the ruling political elite still lives in the past when they ruled like kings and the king could do no wrong. Musharraf sent the judiciary, lock, stock and barrel, home with the stroke of a pen for he considered the constitution an instrument of his executive powers. Our elected PM today stood up in the National Assembly in the emulation of that dictator to say that he had restored the judiciary through an executive action that needed to be endorsed by the Parliament. And in true dictatorial traditions, he also indicated that the judiciary can be sent packing home yet again through (yet another) executive order. So what has changed? Dare one ask the elected PM, or does he consider himself to be the Viceroy of the President, who in turn might equate himself with the Monarch of the Raj, that how did the executive action of the dictator, with an approval of the Parliament, acquired such a legitimacy even though his act was in violation of the constitution? If so, this constitution is a unique document that can be used whichever way required to rule the ordinary subjects, but the elected monarch and his Viceroy are beyond its jurisdiction. Is the superior judiciary so fragile even in a democratic environment, that it can be treated like a toilet paper? -HANIF BALOCH, Quetta, February 16