THE PML-Ns leader hit the nation with a thunderbolt on the Constitutional Reform Package. For some time now the Committee dealing with this issue has spent arduous hours seeking to evolve a consensus on a whole gamut of issues, which would effectively have altered the shape of the original 1973 Constitution. Therein lay the problem and that is what has allowed the PML-N to deliver the blow to what was thought to have been a final consensus on all issues, barring the renaming of the NWFP. Now, Mian Nawaz Sharif has declared that his party had differences on the issue of appointment of judges. The net result has been to allow for the continuation of the dictatorial aberrations to the Constitution and of the Presidents powers that are part of the dictatorial legacy. As has been stated earlier in this space, it was unfortunate that the President chose to ignore the national and political consensus on doing away with these tamperings to the Constitution by successive military rulers and sought to muddy the waters by throwing these amendments into a much wider agenda of effectively rewriting the 1973 Constitution. This has been unfortunate and even if a consensus of sorts had been arrived at, it would have contained so many dissenting notes by some of the major parties that the consensus would have been open to future challenges. Writing a Constitution and getting it accepted is a Herculean task - so why seek to rewrite it instead of merely getting rid of the aberrations to it? On the issue of senior judicial appointments, the present Constitution does provide checks and balances to some extent with the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the President both effectively appointing the judges through a consensus. Nothing is perfect and anyone who wants to exercise arbitrary powers will do so despite rules, norms and procedures. Having said that, why would Mian Nawaz Sharif pull the plug on the Package at the last minute when his people were part of the Committee? He refers to the issue of judicial appointments, but his Partys views had largely been accommodated and there is a general belief that there is something else at play here. After all, an additional member was added to the Judicial Commission for selection of judges. Mr Sharif stated that the judges appointment should be made in consultations with the Chief Justice, but that is what is already provided for very clearly in the already existing 1973 Constitution (Part VII, Chapters 2 and 3). The shock of the PML-Ns backtracking on the joint work of the Reforms Committee clearly illustrates that the government should stop trying to open a Pandoras box of rewriting the 1973 Constitution and simply get on with removing the dictatorial amendments to this document. The national consensus as well as the CoD sought restoration of the 1973 Constitution and that is simply what should be done.