THE political system that is most coveted in the country is parliamentary democracy in the real sense of the world that vests executive powers with Prime Minister and leaves President as a titular head assigned to perform protocol and ceremonial duties. For PPP's Information Secretary Fauzia Wahab, therefore, to envision the element of 'balance of power' between these two offices while effecting a change in the present, skewed order sounds pretty odd. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is right in taking exception to Ms Wahab's utterance that Prime Minister should not be "so strong" and that there should be 'balance of power' between President and him. Mr Gilani's irritation was quite evident when he said, "What Fauzia Wahab says does not matter; it would be decided by the nation." He was talking to reporters after inaugurating a summer college at Islamabad. In fact, the nation has already spoken on the issue when it voted those parties into power that were demanding the repeal of the constitutional amendments that have rendered President as powerful at the cost of Prime Minister and the system topsy-turvy. If a strong Prime Minister could not stop army takeover, as Ms Wahab has reasoned in support of her view, the remedy lies in institutionalising the system and not striking any balance. Well-established institutions would alone prevent a Bonapartist from trying his luck in the future. Not only that. These institutions are also the best way to provide good governance so badly lacking in the country. It is an unfortunate reality of Pakistani politics that on coming to power political parties generally tend not to stick to the agenda that they had presented before the public when out of power. Ms Wahab is obviously not advocating the view on her own and has the support of certain elements in the party. The public memory is not so short, after all, as to forget that virtually all parties worth the name, the PPP included, had been clamouring for the return of parliamentary democratic system as it is enshrined in the Constitution when they campaigned for the ouster of General Musharraf. Although the present political set-up led by the PPP has been in existence at the Centre for the past 15 months, the authorities have regrettably made no tangible move to get rid of the notorious Article 58(2)b and 17th Amendment and implementing the Charter of Democracy. Instead, the PPP prepared a package that had a much wider parameter, thus making consensus among the various political schools of thought fairly difficult to arrive at. One would very much like to wish that main political parties in the country to work out, at the earliest possible, a formula to get rid of the distortions that the 1973 Constitution had been subjected to over the years.