IT WAS first-rate political theatre. As an angry crowd approached a police cordon outside the house of Pakistan’s opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, the “Lion of Punjab”, on March 15th, the police melted like spring snow. They were believed to have detained Mr Sharif in his house that morning, and had arrested dozens of his supporters outside it. Yet they were loyal Punjabis and Mr Sharif, a two-time former prime minister, is Punjab’s man. With a roar of sports-utility vehicles, he and his companions emerged from their den, surged through the barricades and were free.

Entering central Lahore, Punjab’s capital, Mr Sharif’s cavalcade drew thousands, many waving the Islamic green flag of his Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, or PML (N). A few policemen, who had earlier lobbed tear-gas canisters at the throng, joined it. Speaking through a loud-hailer from the back of his blast-proof Toyota Landcruiser (a gift from Saudi Arabia’s King), Mr Sharif declared that a revolution had begun. Leading a convoy of flash off-roaders, followed by tin-can hatchbacks, then autorickshaws and scooters, he surged on to Islamabad, 300km (185 miles) away, where a hapless autocrat, President Asif Zardari, was quaking.

Just after midnight, news broke that Mr Zardari’s prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, had an announcement to make. The autocrat had blinked, though six hours elapsed before Mr Gilani’s televised speech. He declared that Iftikhar Chaudhry, a chief justice sacked by the former president, Pervez Musharraf, in 2007 and since championed by Mr Sharif, would be reinstated on March 21st. Mr Sharif and his supporters went home in triumph.

He would have been expecting this. Though not precisely scripted, this drama had been plotted during ten days of fraught negotiations between Mr Zardari, Mr Sharif and the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, with America and Britain mediating. In a country with little history of political compromise, all deserve praise for this, even Mr Zardari, who had provoked the crisis by leaning on the Supreme Court, which last month barred Mr Sharif and his brother, Shahbaz, from holding public office, and then by disbanding their government in Punjab.

The political fallout is also worth celebrating. Mr Zardari, the unpopular president of a country he is alleged to have looted, has been reduced. With Mr Chaudhry, a dream of judicial independence in Pakistan has been restored. Mr Sharif, a populist and conservative leader, shunned by Pakistan’s and America’s previous administrations, is now talking to everyone and, confident of winning power at Pakistan’s next election, is apparently happy to play by the rules. To encourage him—and as a precursor to Mr Zardari’s cave-in over Mr Chaudhry—Mr Gilani has announced that the government will ask the Supreme Court to review its judgment against the Sharif brothers. In fact Mr Gilani, and the parliamentary system he represents, is another winner. Mr Zardari’s humbling should make it likelier that he will now, as he has long promised, hand back some of the souped-up presidential powers he inherited from Mr Musharraf.

Though chastened by their leader’s disgrace, some senior figures in Mr Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) are also quietly content. Mr Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, has become a clownish regent for her dynasty, dismaying a party that sees itself as Pakistan’s most liberal and democratic. The recent resignation of two PPP ministers once close to Miss Bhutto, Raza Rabbani and Sherry Rehman, hinted at this. Ms Rehman, the information minister, quit last week after television news channels were taken off air by the de facto interior minister, Rehman Malik—one of several unelected cronies through whom Mr Zardari has been misruling his crisis-stricken country.

Promising more grown-up government, Mr Gilani this week vowed to enact the “charter of democracy”, a blueprint for depoliticising Pakistan’s institutions, including the judiciary, and reducing the army’s political sway, which Miss Bhutto and Mr Sharif hashed out while in exile in 2006. On March 17th the prime minister even hinted that an alliance between the PPP and PML (N), formed after they crushed Mr Musharraf’s supporters in an election last year and then wrecked after Mr Zardari broke a promise to reinstate Mr Chaudhry, could be refreshed. That seems unlikely. Yet Pakistan’s leaders do have a second chance to make this government work. The need could scarcely be greater. A suicide-bombing in Rawalpindi on March 16th, farther along the planned route of Mr Sharif’s aborted procession, served as a reminder of a thriving jihadist threat.

Alas, public need has never inspired Pakistani politicians to stop their feuding. Mr Chaudhry, a maverick judge who won little praise before his belated effort to stand up to Mr Musharraf, may provide grounds for more. He was sacked by the former army dictator, under cover of a state of emergency, because he appeared set to declare unconstitutional both Mr Musharraf’s impending re-election as president, and an amnesty from corruption charges for Miss Bhutto and Mr Zardari. That is why Mr Zardari and the army were loth to have Mr Chaudhry back.

Allies of the judge say he will not reopen these controversies. Yet opponents of the government and army, including Imran Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician, are now lining up to petition his court to do so. If even somewhat independent, the judges might be hard-pressed not to rule that, for example, Mr Musharraf seized power illegally (twice) and that Mr Zardari should stand trial for gross corruption the instant he loses presidential immunity. To avoid the crises that would ensue, parliament, led by Mr Sharif and Mr Zardari, may now have to enshrine Mr Musharraf’s legally-dubious legacy in the constitution. This would probably be part of a package of constitutional reforms, including some that Miss Bhutto and Mr Sharif envisaged—for example, to lift a ban on third-term prime ministers and to scrap the president’s power to sack the government.

This is a lot to hope for. Mr Sharif hates Mr Musharraf, the coupster who ousted him, and has a reputation for vengeance. And Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif mistrust each other utterly. At least the army, as well as America, seems for once intent on holding the politicians fairly to account. From painful history, Mr Sharif knows the price of disappointing it. Mr Zardari should now know it, too.