WITH the Supreme Court's detailed judgement on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) now out, the government can no longer put up any excuse for foot-dragging on putting it into effect. When the Court's short order of December 16 declared the NRO as null and void ab initio, the government and its supporters argued that they would wait for the detailed judgement to come out to know the full implications of the directives that the short order contained. The logic behind this reservation obviously was that since it directly affected the President and cronies and a large number of favourite politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and other politically influential persons - over 8,000, in all -, it was better to bide time. Critics, who contended that the directives were quite clear and specific, did not press the point, however, for one thing that the detailed judgement was in any case expected in the near future; and, for another, high government functionaries were declaring that they would abide by the judiciary's decisions. Only last Monday, Prime Minister Gilani told the National Assembly that the government "respects the courts and their verdicts" and the next day the President followed up, endorsing in clear terms the PM's statement to a delegation of the Peoples Lawyers Forum, which called on him at Lahore's Governor House. But in implementing the verdict, lies the rub No less a person than the President finds all cases against him that the NRO had whitewashed reappear in their stark form, whether these cases were within Pakistan or outside. The charge of stashing away $60 million in Switzerland would stand revived, as the government is directed to take up the matter with the authorities there. The then Attorney General Malik Qayyum would have to be proceeded against for transgressing his authority to withdraw the cases against Mr Zardari in Switzerland. The court has not left the matter at that and cites the examples of the Philippines' Marcos and Nigeria's Abacha, whose looted wealth was repatriated to their countries, to prove the point that the illegally acquired wealth taken away from Pakistan can be brought back following the same procedure. Under that category would fall a host of others as well. The judgement also throws open the question of presidential immunity and eligibility for office. Would the government quietly and decently honour the verdict, in letter and in spirit? Or are we up for a period of a clash of institutions and political turmoil? The public utterances of the President as well as the Prime Minster, vowing respect for the judiciary, suggest the happier course. However, the post-short order scenario, which is filled with the threat of the use of Sindh card and the exercise to get provincial assemblies and public backing for Mr Zardari, comes as a prelude to defiance. One must wish that wiser counsels prevail and an institutional clash that can endanger the nascent democratic experiment is avoided at all costs. It is in obeying the rule of law and accepting the judicial interpretation of the constitution that lies the hope for the country's retrieval from the abyss, moral, social as well as political, that unscrupulous rulers have led it to.