Photo: AFP

We all knew the Supreme Court would strike down the NRO and yet we left our television sets on for five hours waiting for the inevitable announcement (at least, that’s what journalists did; I hope everyone else had enough common sense to watch the fascinating England-South Africa Test match). The NRO has been declared null and void, all cases that were pending before the courts and all verdicts that were overturned by the ordinance will now be reopened.

I tend to avoid television news because I value my sanity so it was instructive to catch up with the likes of Geo and Express. Hamid Mir, whose excitement at the impending verdict was so inappropriate I expected him to break out in song at any moment, wondered aloud if the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 could have been avoided if the Iftikhar Chaudhry Supreme Court had been around then. Because nothing works better against genocide than court orders. None of his yes-men panelists thought to ask Mir why the magical Supreme Court hasn’t ended the conflict in Balochistan, stopped militancy in NWFP and the tribal areas and cured the common cold.

Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan, meanwhile, made a fool of himself on Express 24/7 by explaining how ministers have less influence and are less able to use their positions for their advantage than a common citizen. How the interviewer did not laugh in Awan’s face is beyond me.

I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if the Swiss laughed us right out of court. The Government of Pakistan first filed a case against Asif Zardari more than a decade ago and then abruptly withdrew it in 2007. Now, the Supreme Court has directed them to take up the case again. Maybe we can tell the Swiss we’ll make up our minds and stop wasting their time if they overturn the minaret ban and make Roger Federer an honorary Pakistani citizen.

On a slightly more serious note, the fiasco over the NRO shows that we need a statute of limitations on corruption cases. Many of the cases about to be reopened date back more than 20 years and, even in cases where the accused is clearly guilty, they are always politically motivated and directed against previous governments. The statute of limitations should be more than five years, to ensure that a sitting government doesn’t ignore away cases they don’t want to prosecute, but less than 10, so that they don’t drag on endlessly.

What’s also been lost in the NRO brouhaha is the corruption of previous PML-N governments and the politically compromised position of the Supreme Court. Since Nawaz Sharif was convicted and pardoned back when Musharraf’s dictatorship was blessed by the Supreme Court, that amnesty is not going to be questioned. But the PPP government is not going to let the PML-N off the hook. Already, they are trying to get former Ehtesab Bureau chief Saif-ur-Rehman back to the country and are sure to file many such tit-for-tat cases.

There’s one political actor that must be loving what’s going on right now. Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani will be thanking his lucky stars for the opportunity he’s been given.