IT is a pity the government was so evasive of the Swiss case and fought shy of uncapping it. For the resultant impression is that there are things the concerned and empowered need to hide.

Why resist investigative reporting, court proceedings and directives? It may not be just about secreting ill-gotten gains; especially as corruption charges, Mr Zardari's champions allege, are mere allegations. The credibility deficit between officialdom and public could degenerate into active mistrust — the more unsettling because grave suspicions are left unvoiced.

While the PPP emoted about not allowing Benazir's grave to be figuratively desecrated by way of a posthumous review, the UN report on her assassination was released.

It came hard upon the heels of the 18th Amendment. Legislators have taken the long dead Gen Zia's name out of the book but continue to ignore any exemplary punishment for Gen Musharraf's more recent constitutional vandalism coups have been treason since the 1973 constitution was first framed.

The ambit of presidential indemnity is wide. Its protective umbrella overlooks the former president and provides amnesty with embarrassing speed to the interior minister. What makes the president desist in one case and act so rapidly in the other without justice having been seen to be done more conventionally?

Fear and opacity permeate Pakistan's corridors of power, instead of the longed for openness and self-confidence that characterise the democratic mode.

How wise is a principle of absolute immunity while holding office in the fuller context of Pakistan's sleaze-jammed democratic politics? Some compare it to a stay order on corruption. In the past NAB's witch hunters focused on nailing the previous government. Today efforts appear geared to insulating the present one. Pro-active the approach may be, but how perverted! Appropriate accountability should serve to inhibit offence in the present continuous.

Does corruption matter all that much in a country that is stalked by 'Islamist' terror? It does — even more than in a country that is otherwise comparatively stable. Uncertainty and dishonesty aid any mafia.

In Pakistan we are looking at a deteriorating law and order situation and the word 'law' is a key word. Pakistanis are becoming increasingly uncontrollable and contemptuous of civic norms against a background where they perceive their superiors doing much the same. Law-enforcement authorities do not command enough public esteem when preaching general respect for the law and its details.

In many tiny ways we see the writ of the state being eroded along with its moral authority. Traders will not close shop at regulated hours. People riot to obtain attention to unmet civic needs. Traffic rules are enforceable for violators who lack patronage or the will and money to bribe.

The government fixes prices but traders and retailers have their own rates. Why should a poor man shun kunda or a student be embarrassed about cheating? Parliamentarians are not. At another level, provincial governments resist VAT irrespective of IMF dependencies they themselves recognise for the federation. And at the very highest level, the prime minister may be heard reiterating the government intends to abide by SC judgements.

Should the question arise? If obeying or implementing law is a matter of choice for legislators because they make and change it, Pakistan's democratic software has a virus!

The prime minister also asked, and perhaps not rhetorically, why those who devised and brokered the NRO escape the intensity of local ire; and why the president's case, alone, out of the scores of NRO beneficiaries, dominates the media scene and preoccupies the public.

Well, presidential office is an attention-getter; the president is a partisan politician; and the NRO's foreign facilitators are foreign. However, the public would be riveted if former President Musharraf was indicted or questioned by the legislature and the executive in full media view.

And it would rise in a standing ovation if personnel of the civil and military security agencies suspected of rogue activity, intrigue and electoral manipulation undergo impartial, open, official investigation — without caveats for establishment minions today. To the public, elected politicians who direct government and exercise executive authority, and government employees, are all part of that murky menacing establishment that the serving government frequently asserts it feels at its throat.

Pakistan is a country where the infrastructure is cracking, prices are rising and good governance is a purchasable branded commodity out of stock. Tackling corruption in the civil, military, judicial, industrial, financial, legislative, political spheres is an overriding national concern. Citizens come face to face with corruption in minor and major ways in the course of any ordinary day.

There is a danger of Pakistanis becoming habituated to this; or even converting to accepting it as the working method, for it has its rewards. We could actually get to prefer the corrupt to the incorruptible politician.

Despite some significant voiced apprehensions of transmigration from military to judicial tyranny, the Supreme Court has a track record of conduct under unseemly official pressure and enticement that inspires public confidence. The public that was ready to give Mr Zardari a chance to vindicate himself in office has not yet found reason to repent of the faith they placed in PCO 1 judges who resisted a PCO 2.

The PML-N and the PPP also have a well-documented past when holding office. This includes their leaders' orientation to the judiciary cherry-picking with a veto; transfers; expanded/new courts with fresh nominees... Their purring consensus over how to choose the right judge, suggests politicians are still in the quest of a pliable sanctifying judiciary. That is why segmental moves the government makes, as judicial reform and grants and overtures to the bar, appear suspect. It really is about much more than the NRO and fiscal corruption.

It would be a pity to paralyse and inhibit a judiciary that has generated hope. And it would be a tragedy if political performance or non-performance alienated the governed from a civil democratic process. Parliament has powers. It could bear in mind that the next stage in the course of untreated corruption is decay.