THERE is a waning sense of reality in national politics as each day passes. The ruling party with Gen Musharraf as its godfather is flexing its muscles in preparation for next year’s general elections, and the curtain rises on a theatre of the absurd yet again.

There is a sense of urgency in demonising the Bhuttos and the Sharifs, but more despicable is the regime’s fixation on crowning ethnic and religious mavericks, including those running private prisons in the rural hinterland; in short, all those known to hold the people hostage. If this is what Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and the Chaudhries of Punjab call ‘real’ democracy, then Lord have mercy on us.

The ‘sympathisers’ within the civil-military establishment of the fire-breathing religio-political groupings, such as the erstwhile banned sectarian outfits — the Sipah-i-Sahaba and the Sipah-i-Mohammed in Punjab and the ‘local’ Taliban in South Waziristan — seem to have been given the charge yet again to ‘manage’ the 2007 elections. This is being done ostensibly to curb the influence of the six-party multi-sect religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which the intelligence agencies now believe has grown too big for its boots.

The MMA’s impressive showing, with or without help from intelligence operatives, in the 2002 elections, whereby it swept the polls in the Frontier, bagged the majority vote in Balochistan as well as got its key leaders elected from most big cities in Sindh and Punjab has become a real cause for concern for the establishment. More so, because the religious alliance was reared as a partner in power by the military intelligence, but the subsequent falling out of the alliance with the military-led regime mostly under pressure from the Jamaat-i-Islami leadership, has necessitated the official shift in seeking loyalties elsewhere for the generals’ tailor-made political dispensation. The JI, smitten by last year’s rout in Karachi’s local elections, is going all out to oppose the military-approved democratic set-up, and has, thus, fallen out of favour with the civil-military establishment.

These are indications that those with little proven credentials to fit the political roles assigned to them will continue to rule the roost in the post-2007 scenario. The ad-hocism that every military ruler must continue to practise in order to stay relevant to a political dispensation of his own creation has yet to come full circle on the home front.

It has nearly run full circle on the foreign policy front, with many western governments losing interest in the pseudo-liberal rhetoric being mouthed by the ruler here in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US. Many in Washington are now openly doubting Pakistan’s sincerity in following Gen Musharraf’s blueprint for a forward-looking, nuclear-armed Muslim state that can be trusted, even if not positively engaged over the longer term.

Forget George Bush’s South Asia visit and Pakistan’s failure to get anything valuable out of it. Much has been written about what was essentially a non-event; even ambassador Jehangir Karamat knew the unimportance of the trip and decided to stay back in Washington when the US president came visiting Islamabad. Take the expansion of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation by inducting Afghanistan into the grouping as a tell-tale example of Pakistan’s foreign policy failure.

Subsequent exchanges of accusations between Kabul and Islamabad have made it clear that the hasty decision will not bring home any likely dividends. Kabul has all but proved to be an Indian Trojan horse in Saarc so far, with the doublespeak from the other side of the Durand Line receiving a tacit approval from Washington.

The political failings at home and abroad of this regime are staggering. This realisation would have sent chills down the spine of any genuinely elected government gearing up for a re-election. The promises mad about social reform have remained just that. No substantive lawmaking has been undertaken to reverse the sorry fate of the hapless women of this country. Women MPs elected to the assemblies on reserve seats have remained a muted lot during the past four years and laws repugnant to women continue to be on the statute, despite the promise made by Gen Musharraf to do something about them. Violence against women has seen no significant decline, and that against minorities has even recorded an increase in the corresponding period.

The accountability process initiated after the 1999 military take-over has been a witch hunt of the opposition leaders, while the government’s own allies and its sitting ministers have been virtually exempted from the process. The promise of good governance made to the people in the name of the devolution plan has been subjected to the whims of provincial governments that operate more as heads of fiefdoms when it comes to getting the goods delivered down to the grassroots level.

Likewise, the police reform has not taken off the ground at all, with police brutality and abuse of power being the hallmark of that discredited institution. The seamy side of promised ‘real’ democracy is all too obvious. This is as obvious as the failure of the political system that was reinvented, in hindsight, perhaps only to keep certain individuals out of the political fray.

Not only on the political front is the theatre of the absurd unveiling itself, the spin-doctoring of the country’s state of the economy and its in the years ahead is also in full swing. Rather than being embarrassed by the sugar crisis, for which many of the mill-owing ministers are believed to be directly responsible, the government has started harping on the so-called economic turnaround that has shown few signs of trickling down to the masses. It is not even funny how the largely prosperous bunch of MNAs — treasury and the opposition combined — gave themselves a whopping pay rise last year to offset inflation, which the PM says is an indication of a growing economy not likely to affect the common citizen. The gap between the perception of the ruling and the ruled has never been wider.

Other flimsy claims of a turnaround have come in the form of the rising ownership in the country of personal vehicles, import of luxury cars, proliferation of luxury housing estates in major cities and of selling off of national assets such as the PTCL, the KESC, Pakistan Steel, etc. to private parties. There is no accountability as to the expenditure of the wealth the government has thus amassed on public welfare projects or on building and upgrading the socio-economic infrastructure that could benefit the people at large.

Forget health and education, for these sectors have long been in a neglected state. The recent failures in education include the government’s inability even to implement its own commissioned, standardised examination system that the Aga Khan Examination Board was prevailed upon to take up. In the health sector, public hospitals are not able to cater even to the medical needs, including critically required surgery, of its own ranking civil servants. Last but not least, when was the last time one heard of affordable housing or public transport systems being launched for the urban middle class, especially in the big cities?

A lopsided emphasis on the big and grand seems to be the only preoccupation of the government, whereby existing good roads in our cities’ posh areas are being further upgraded and beautified, prime urban land is being commercialised for the building of glossy glass-front high-rises and high-end digital technological media and security services are being offered to the richest of the rich.

The emerging Defence Housing Authorities in Lahore and Islamabad, for instance, are prime examples of the last mentioned gambit, involving what we are told are mini-digital revolutions underwritten heavily by foreign investors for their own benefit and of those who can pay for such luxuries. Where in all of this does the blue-collar urban worker fit? What is being done to ease the suffering of the middle class on account of a constantly rising cost of living?

Policy disasters abound. So much so that agriculture has also borne the brunt of lopsided policy-making. An acute water shortage continues to strain inter-provincial relations as well as shrink the acreage of irrigable land. Produce of staple crops has seen an actual decline in recent years as there are more and more mouths to feed, with the country having to import wheat, sugar and vegetables. All this, while the president prides himself on felting to the nation that the country is moving from an agriculture-based to an industry-based economy.

Who, you might ask, will feed the teeming millions already living below the poverty line and with no access to jobs in the years ahead? Surely, the underprivileged won’t be able to buy imported sugar, grains and vegetables at international prices. Agriculture is the hand that has been feeding the rich and the poor of this country, and now we hear that that sector, too, is being sacrificed at the altar of this regime’s obsession with a show-case modernity that will only benefit the rich.

These are all grim realities that the prime minister, even as the figurehead of the present government, seems all too blissfully ignorant of. For the thinking few out there, these are the obvious challenges that stare us in the face: any grand road leading to a ‘real’ democracy will have to be built on a humbler, even if bumpy, road of democracy. Not doing so simply means that our present set of dream merchants live in a world of make-believe. The pockets of affluence we see today are surrounded by boiling pools of discontent all around. For how long the newly constructed underpasses and flyovers will continue to transport the rich and famous in and out of their comfortable grooves is anyone’s guess.