THIS will be the mother of all elections, says the general-president. For once let us take him at his word. Indeed, for once he is right. For this promises to be a seminal affair: determining for a long time to come whether genuine freedom can prevail in Pakistan or whether the exercise of democracy is beyond us and we are destined to live under tinpot authoritarianism.

The bugles have sounded. Could not they be heard as the old year was passing and the new one coming in? The battle lines are drawn. On one side our past — some shining moments in it but for the most part the stuff of heartache — on the other, the future, calling upon us to seize it.

What do we — the elder citizens of Pakistan, so to speak — want to leave behind us? A future which is an extension of the past and hence no future or, God willing, a break with the past? That, and not someone’s skin or uniform, will be the issue in these elections. If they are held, that is, and nerves hold when crunch time comes.

It is not that we are insensitive to the fears and insecurities of those riding the tiger. We care deeply and we don’t want anyone to be devoured by the tiger. It is just that the larger good is more important.

But pity the nation whose champions of democracy are little better than its destroyers. The destroyers have their priorities clear. Why are the champions so confused about theirs?

What does Benazir Bhutto and her party hope to gain by collaborating with the present order, especially when it is creaking at the joints, its inherent weaknesses more and more exposed with every passing day?

When a vetted audience of loyal government supporters in Khanewal, bused in by nazims and naib nazims, can shout “onions, onions” (referring to the price of onions, by now the most telling symbol of national inflation), when a 21-year-old student from Karachi stands up in the Convention Centre, Islamabad, and amidst wild clapping (and remember this too was a vetted audience) asks the president, “General, you are the guardian of the nation’s frontiers, who showed you the path to the presidency?” then are not these signs from heaven that this arrangement is close to the end of its road?

Young Adnan Kakakhel was brilliant. The video of his performance, captured secretly by phone camera, is circulating across the country. The function of course was compered by friend Mushahid Hussain, once constant joke-cracking courtier at Nawaz Sharif’s darbar, now putting his shoulder to the national interest under the Musharraf banner.

To give him his due, nothing shakes his cool. Whenever I meet him, and I did so at the Marriot in Islamabad last week (where I had gone to attend one of those obscene ‘power’ weddings now very much the norm in the Islamic Republic) he was his usual hearty self.

Lesser souls would not be able to carry off the embarrassment of being secretary-general of the Q League, Gen Musharraf’s instrument for keeping the political field in line. Mushahid, more power to his elbow, does so with aplomb.

To collaborate with such an order at such a time, when the autumn of the patriarch is already over and deep winter is about to set in, no matter if the Yanks are urging and pushing the PPP in that direction, is it not the height of folly?

The great legacy of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto — already much dented and tarnished by Benazir’s numerous twists over the years — finally sacrificed at the altar of a cheap bargain. Is reprieve or relief in the Swiss or Spanish cases worth the ignominy of such a wretched transaction?

And for what? For crumbs from the table of power, for the privilege of collaborating with the present order, which means serving it, like the Q League is doing, like the MQM is doing, and like the holy fathers of the MMA have done so brilliantly.

The first slightly left-of-centre anti-establishment party to come to power in Pakistan, or in that Pakistan which remained after the birth of Bangladesh, and braving adversity for years coming to such a sorry end: supping with the devil and stepping over that line in the sand dividing honour from lasting dishonour. A crying shame, as even PPP diehards will reluctantly admit.

Abida Hussain (ex-minister, ambassador, etc) who has just joined the PPP was telling me on the telephone the other day (yes, we are friends again) that BB mustn’t sell herself short. Why should she sell herself at all, long or short?

For if she does, there will be no room for excuses. The deed will have been done. As Marx warned, “It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their nation was taken unawares. A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them.”

Do I hear whispers from the shadows to the effect that honour is for fools? Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did not think so when he went to the gallows, his head unbowed.

If his legacy remains, it is not, principally, because of any Bolshevik or revolutionary achievement when in power, but for the manner he faced death, defiant to the last.

The name of his hangman, Gen Zia, is mud. Bhutto’s name lives on.

Saddam Hussein of brave Tikrit did not think so when he went to the gallows, his many sins washed away by his calmness and courage in the face of death.

If he had cringed or even slightly faltered that would have been the end of his story. But he is already a hero for his people, the Sunni half, or near half, of Iraq.

Maybe the Americans wanted it this way, the flames of sectarian conflict rising higher. There is a witches’ brew cooking in Iraq and every day something fresh is added to it. The Yanks are paying the price of their folly but that is beside the point. Two hundred years from now, Saddam’s cruelty and mistakes will be forgotten. The legend of his bravery will survive.

No, the Pakistani nation is at a turning on the road and which path it takes will have a profound impact on its future. Authoritarianism or the people’s will? That alone will be the question in the mother of all elections. Faced with an issue of like importance in 1971, the people and leadership of what was then West Pakistan abdicated historical responsibility and the result was the break-up of Pakistan. We cannot make a habit of courting disaster. One tryst with disaster in ‘71 should be enough.

Remember, August 14, 2007, will be Pakistan’s 60th birthday. Not able to decide in six decades of existence which path to take: can any fate be more cruel than this? “Is it true, then,” asks Hugo in ‘Les Miserables’, “the soul may be cured, but not destiny? What a frightful thing! An incurable destiny.”

Not just the PPP, all the opposition parties bear a heavy responsibility. They must prepare for elections but not surrender to temptation or petty advantage. Or fall prey to shortsightedness, condemning Pakistan to hopelessness and despair for a long time to come.

Whether they contest the general elections separately or as part of a loose coalition time will tell. But about one thing they should be clear. On no account should they participate in the farce of electing the president for another term from the present assemblies. History will not forgive them if they become bit players in this comedy.

If the president and his men — ultra-loyalists like the Punjab chief minister, Pervaiz Elahi — insist on going ahead with this joke, let the onus for it be on their heads. PPP, PML-N and even the holy fathers of the MMA, who must for once be able to rise above the narrow prism of their self-interest, should take this as a cue to walk out of the pantomime of the present assemblies, leaving the president and his men to their own devices. Then let circumstances take what course they will.