A civil court has maintained status quo on the Sharif family’s Jati Umra residence for the time being, which means PTI and PML-N will throw a lot more mud at each other before this is done, but that only underscores the need to settle such matters promptly and keep them well away from the public eye. If, going by the Punjab government’s position, the part of the estate where the family residence is built does in fact belong to it, then it doesn’t reflect too well on the civil machinery that this matter has come out just when the government and opposition are engaged in a bitter, almost ugly, battle for political survival. Now the longer this drags on the more PML-N will accuse the ruling party of the old witch hunt, especially since practically nothing has come of so many corruption cases against its members so far. Now it is up to the courts to decide which side the devil in the details exonerates. It is already pretty surprising that such straight forward matters can be made to appear so complicated and take so much time. How hard can it really be, and how long can it possibly take for that matter, to open relevant files and cross check all transactions? Hopefully the honourable court will not unearth any deliberate attempts to delay proceedings because if such a thing happens then yet more inquiries would have to be ordered. And this case would go on like a broken record. As bad as the optics of such things are, perhaps an even more unfortunate outcome of tit-for-tit government-opposition exchanges is that they always divert everybody’s attention away from their real jobs. The Punjab government’s time is meant for running the government to serve the people. And the opposition has a very clear role to play to keep the system running on track. It seems the mechanism to deal with situations where one has problems with the other needs to be brushed up a little and made more efficient. Knocking on the judiciary’s door whenever members of the House have problems with one another does not suit a working democracy. There is a lesson in this. It’s best to wrap up this case quickly and make sure such things do not dominate the news cycle or anybody’s priority list in future. *