In a surprise move PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif filed a petition in the Supreme Court Wednesday seeking resolution of ‘memogate’. Whilst the wording of the petition ostensibly comes to the defence of the armed forces of the country, it simultaneously prays to the court to summon in person not only the president, the ex-ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani, the US businessman Mansoor Ijaz, and foreign and interior secretaries, but also the Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and the ISI chief Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha. Labelling the affair of the memo a “dreadful conspiracy to demonise, ridicule, malign and consequently demoralise and terrorise and resultantly to destroy the invaluable and valiant Armed Forces of Pakistan; to trade away the very existence and the future of Pakistan”, he was clearly not only playing to the gallery, but appeared to be killing a number other birds as well with the same stone. With the swift replacement of Husain Haqqani with PPP MNA Sherry Rehman as Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, the brouhaha over memogate was in danger of losing steam. Sharif apparently did not deem it decorous to wait out the nine-day deadline he had given the government to form an independent commission to investigate the matter before going to court. Not only did he not wait for his own deadline to run out, a second, joint petition by PML-N leaders Khawaja Asif and Ishaq Dar was also filed in the Supreme Court. The indecent haste appears to signal a desperate need to keep the PPP in the pressure cooker, whilst grabbing favourable headlines from certain obliging sections of the media. The headlines would certainly make for a welcome change for the party after the recent rain on PML-N’s parade in Punjab by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). And to deflect any criticism for not invoking parliament’s authority first, which should have been the first port of call for an opposition party, a letter to the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security Mian Raza Rabbani to investigate the memo business was also dispatched. Given Rabbani’s prompt compliance with the request, additional headlines on memogate may be expected. Of course, all of this can be expected to lay waste the PPP’s damage limitation scramble, whilst simultaneously serving to accrue political capital for the PML-N. Whilst these actions on the part of the PML-N may appear starkly divergent from Sharif’s solemn pledges of a different style of politics to that of the nineties, such that the process of democracy is never derailed again, a key element of the petition filed indicates to the contrary. The inclusion of the ISI and army chief as respondents in the petition appears not only to be a clear warning to them not to think of any adventure, but also an allusion to the fact that the case is far from an open and shut one. This would seem plausible given the gaping holes and unanswered questions surrounding Mansoor Ijaz’s motives, his known hostility towards the ISI juxtaposed with his secret meeting with the ISI chief in a London hotel room, the unlikelihood of the purported channel used given Ambassador Haqqani’s access to the highest echelons of the US government and other aspects of the controversy that do not quite fit.. Given the PML-N’s current predicament of seeming drift, the petition could be the best gambit for the party to take advantage of the memogate controversy.*