THE debate is no longer about whether the current military-led regime will make its final exit but when and how it will do so. The writing on the wall has been there since before March 9, but is now inscribed in flashing neon lights. It does seem that despite its blinkers, the regime is beginning to perceive the looming danger. It can no longer dismiss it as a bad dream, but it has yet to move on from being in denial to taking realistic action to resolve the crisis.

Although the action against the Chief Justice, which the regime now concedes, was ‘mishandled’ triggered the crisis, the judicial outcome, whatever it is, will not be able turn back the clock. Indeed, the more protracted the legal proceedings become, the deeper the government will fall into a political quagmire of its own making.

No wonder that doubts pertaining to the wisdom of filing the reference are mounting among government’s supporters and the demand for its withdrawal is gaining momentum, with Zafarullah Khan Jamali, who has paid heavily for his dissent in the past, mounting a mini-insurrection within their ranks.

The Chaudhry clan is watching suspiciously over its shoulders for more chinks in its increasingly unsafe and crumbling fortress.

The muted revolt of the former president of the PML-Q women’s wing, who has been caught in the cross-fire between Lal Masjid and the Hafsa brigade and the interior ministry and Chaudhry Shujaat, is another sign of a brewing storm in the party.

Many other prominent leaders, who have deliberately avoided defending the government on talk shows, are sitting on the fence to choose the right moment to abandon the sinking ship on which nobody even cares to rearrange the deck chairs.

The redoubtable railways minister, albeit, has characteristically risen to the occasion and offered to arrange free train travel for any of his colleagues who may be lucky enough to make it to the shore and regroup to revive the party’s flagging fortunes.

The option of jettisoning the MQM’s contaminated political baggage, in the wake of the May 12 disturbances, is also being debated.

In this increasingly bleak scenario, the beleaguered president, never lacking in bravado or given to the folly of self-effacement, in a speech at the new site of the earthquake-destroyed Balakot city, resorted to one of his most feisty self-defences yet.

This risky all-or-none strategy is characteristic of those losing their grip on power and taking the plunge into unknown territory.

In trying to prove himself holier than the holiest, Gen Musharraf cited his several visits to the Ka’aba where he earned high and unprecedented religious honours and the privilege of entering the innermost sanctum of the Holy Prophet’s tomb, in an attempt to upstage Gen Ziaul Haq who laid the political foundation of religious extremism in Pakistan.

In an interview to Aaj TV, the president blamed the media for imbalanced reporting against the authorities. He defended the events of May 12, both the tragic mayhem in Karachi and the vulgar festivity in Islamabad, and strongly criticised the innuendos of ethnic bias in defending the MQM against charges of its failure to maintain law and order and for causing death and destruction.

Even more striking was his belief in his own leadership qualities and the insistence that he did not have a dictatorial role in decision-making, with the incredulous assertion that Shaukat Aziz (whose abilities as a leader of any substance are being openly doubted by those he interacts with abroad) was the real prime minister.

Neither is the general prepared to admit that there exists a crisis of legitimacy, nor to give any but the vaguest indication of a change in his future political course.

This “business as usual” stance seems to be based not so much on the perceived strength of his own associates as on the hope that the regime will somehow be able to prevent the forces against it from uniting in a grand alliance, despite the glue provided by the Chief Justice’s suspension.

He believes that as in the past, with a combination of political chicanery, bluff, intimidation, blackmail and false promises, the agencies and behind the scenes intermediaries could well succeed in staving off the final blow to his dying regime. The only trouble is that such manoeuvres have often been bungled in the past and have created more problems.

The events of May 12 have brought to the surface two of the more serious divides that could haunt the country in the coming months.

The first is the ethnic divide which has plagued Karachi for more than two decades and which has been kept subdued largely by the political and economic support given to the city and the MQM by the present regime and which is likely to be unravelled in the wake of the May 12 incidents.

The other is the religious divide, which has emerged as a sideshow during the present crisis, partly to scare the West and partly to induce the liberals not to rock Musharraf’s boat.

Both these schisms, promoted by existing and preceding military regimes, are part of a more overarching fault-line that has split the country along economic divisions since it was put on the map by Pakistan’s first military ruler Gen Ayub Khan.

A hallmark of the economic policies of all military regimes (except that of Gen Yahya Khan, who was much too busy entertaining himself to care about the affairs of the state) has been to exacerbate the economic disparities and increase the burden on the poor over time.

Ayub Khan did try to reduce the feudal hold by introducing land reforms, promoting basic democracy and rural development, but this was done at the expense of increasing income inequality and creating industrial oligarchies.

Gen Zia let in the military’s camel into the economic tent and laid the foundation of Military Inc., which has bloomed during the current regime.

The regimes of both Generals Zia and Musharraf benefited financially from the American involvement in the Afghan jihad, the former for promoting it and the latter for suppressing it.

Since much of the largesse was for surreptitious activities — and largely out of civilian or legislative oversight — it was used in both cases, for the personal or corporate interests of the military.

Both the Zia and Musharraf regimes have claimed large reductions — achieved by doctoring data — in the incidence of poverty during their tenures, a distinctive feature of democratically unaccountable regimes. Gen Zia’s claim was based on the introduction of the zakat and ushr system, while that of the current regime’s is based on the speciously high growth rates and the elite IMF-World Bank-sponsored poverty-reduction programmes.

The problems that are being faced by Pakistan are to an extraordinary extent the result of the military’s unfettered ascendancy in the country’s polity, which has been facilitated to an equal extent by the lack of unity among the country’s political parties.

After experiencing bitter humiliation and prolonged wilderness for several decades, they must now find a formula for proofing the political system against the frequent inroads of the military.

The Chief Justice’s case has provided them with a unique historical opportunity to sink their differences and to seek the help of the legal and judicial community to ensure that the military’s door to the political barn is tightly sealed forever.

For this, the political parties will have to engage in a genuine process of reconciliation among themselves and to forget and forgive the excesses they have perpetrated against each other. Partisanship will have to give way to consensus.

This, of course, is easier said than done; but at no time in the country’s history has the political scenario been more propitious for reconciliation than now. It would also greatly help if the military brass realised, as the saner elements among its retired colleagues have already affirmed, that the military has long overstayed its welcome in politics and needs to resume its normal duties under civilian control. Hence, it is hoped that it will eventually agree to pave the way for a peaceful and orderly transition for a genuinely democratic dispensation to be installed.

In all the current discourse on the political scenarios likely to emerge after the traumatic events of the last 10 weeks, the ordinary people of Pakistan only peripherally enter the political calculus.

Yet, they are the ones who will be most affected and without whose active involvement none of the desired changes in the political system can come about.

It is, therefore, necessary that all parties which are in a position to agree on a democratic and economically equitable dispensation should urgently engage themselves in drawing up a common minimum agenda for the democratic, economic and human rights of the people.

sm_naseem@hotmail.com