LAHORE had plenty of reasons to distribute sweets on Monday — to celebrate one man’s ouster and the advancement of another. Like always the provincial capital played a crucial part in toppling a ruler who had once seemed so invincible. Two of its men, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, not to speak of scores of others who worked backstage, had by all definitions provided the vanguard to the movement for the removal of President Pervez Musharraf. They had lent the movement its menacing no-compromise look, helped by groups of lawyers, the leaders from Mansoora, by Imran Khan and his Tehrik-i-Insaaf and by the civil society organisations that chanted for a return of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in rallies at campuses and on the stretch of the Mall that links the Punjab assembly with the Lahore High Court. And after the return of the Sharifs last November and their party’s success at the polls in February 2008, the Punjab metropolis provided the pivot to the ‘go Musharraf’ drive.

It is no surprise then that there are celebrations all around, except maybe a small room where intellectuals sit and assess the impact the departure may have on the country’s battle against extremism and on Gen Musharraf’s friends such as Governor Salmaan Taseer. After all there was in not too distant a past no dearth of people who saw the general as the last man standing against the tide of fundamentalism. They were willing to forget his non-democratic credentials so long as he took on the real problem: Taliban and Co.

Even the merrymakers sense that their job is far from over. The gentleman who reports that the ordinary man in Lahore wants Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif as the new president sums up the mood without necessarily looking at the constitutional and political implications of such a coronation. The desire is to see all glory and honour of the past restored to Mian Saheb. Keeping in mind that the president’s office may lose its powers vested in it by Article 58(2)b, his supporters will probably accept him in the role of the prime minister.

They have reason to be upbeat since everything over the last few months has gone in Mian Nawaz Sharif’s favour. He has not only managed to stage a comeback to the country from an impossible situation, each and every act on his part since his return has added to his and his party’s public ratings. Even their silence on an affair as complicated as the militancy and efforts to counter it has been met with approval. At least Mian Saheb’s clout around his traditional base has grown and while his coalition partner has hogged the blame for all the setbacks on the way so far. The Pakistan Muslim League-N has stuck fast to the demand for the restoration of judges and just when it seemed that the issue may be close to a resolution, the party distinguished itself from its coalition partners by pressing for a trial of the ousted president.

Now that Gen Pervez Musharraf is gone, the PML-N may need to be more innovative to keep the Pakistan People’s Party occupied with this pro-people threat from within the coalition. But the manner adopted by the Sharifs and their aides until now is consistent with the scenario at the moment the Sharifs were making their re-entry into the country’s political arena. The basis of that analysis was that the establishment was not in favour of allowing a free reign to the PPP, even if the PPP manoeuvred its way to the top. The establishment had to at least keep the PPP in check if the circumstances didn’t allow it to altogether shut the door of power on the PPP -- circumstances following the death of Ms Benazir Bhutto. The Sharifs offered an alternative but there was a slight problem: their conflict with the president. Gen Musharraf’s exit on Monday has removed that obstacle and the Sharifs can now discuss the possibilities with their backers without worrying about a powerful presidency.

This line of thinking may not go down well with all those who are shouting revolution and victory on the streets of Lahore right now. They should pause for a moment and realise that the change has come about not on the strength of their push alone, but by the convergence of various factors that had to lead to a compromise. Even if the many months’ old scenario that cast Mian Saheb as having been restored to his old blue-eyed position was to be discarded as far-fetched, there can be no dispute that the ouster of the president has considerably brightened the PML-N quaid’s chances to re-enter the prime minister’s office. There is no doubt of course that such a development will come at PPP’s expense. From the start it was in one party’s interest to keep the government afloat for as long as possible. There is no change on that count.