I think it was Harry Truman who once remarked: "Ultimately, all politics is about jobs." And in America, literally thousands of jobs are up for grabs after every presidential election.

In Pakistan where we are supposed to have a professional bureaucracy, jobs usually have a longer shelf life than in the United States. But the reality is that over the years, top jobs in the hierarchy have become so politicized that they change hands with the new administration.

Thus, virtually every secretary at the federal and the provincial level is switched around when a new government is sworn in. If he is lucky, his fall will be limited to a less important ministry, but at least his perks will remain intact. Under less fortunate circumstances, he will be made an OSD, or Officer on Special Duty. While this title may seem impressive, the reality is that he has no office, no perks and no staff. In effect, he is a non-person and occupies a slot in bureaucratic limbo, drawing a salary, but performing no useful task unless he is somehow reinstated into the new administration's good books.

If an officer has offended the current administration when it was out of power, he has every chance of getting suspended and faced with an enquiry that could last years. The fate of officials appointed on contract to man various echelons of the state's vast corporate sector is even more uncertain as they usually have to make room for the favourites of the incoming administration.

However, this is not true for serving and retired military officers who man the commanding heights of Pakistan's administration and economy. These worthies who seldom have any professional qualifications to match their assignments are generally beyond the reach of mere politicians. This is specially true of those appointed to a vast array of civilian jobs over the last three years. Indeed, seldom in the course of human history have so many been appointed in so short a period.

But these serving and retired officers can rest easy in the knowledge that General Musharraf will look after them as he will himself, his personal staff and his favourites in the cabinet once a civilian government is voted into office next week. So sure is he of his position in the post-election scenario that he has made it clear that certain ministers will stay on, irrespective of whomsoever the elected prime minister might want.

And here lie the seeds of an immediate clash between the non-elected president and the elected government. While Musharraf will want to keep many of those he brought in over the last three years, there will be a lot of pressure on the next political government to give jobs to those perceived as loyal to it. Or, wonder of wonders, the next administration might actually want to get rid of unqualified military brass and bring in professionals. While I am not holding my breath waiting for this to happen, the fact remains that the future PM will have political debts to pay off and favourites to reward.

This contradiction will be sharper at the provincial level, but for different reasons. The so-called devolution process, so proudly proclaimed and established by General Musharraf and General Naqvi of the National Reconstruction Bureau, has thrown up a tier of elected officials who have taken over many of the tasks of provincial governments which, once sworn into office, will discover they have no powers worth the name. How happily will provincial ministers transfer resources to local bodies when they don't even have the power to hire a schoolteacher?

In the diplomatic corps, the Musharraf government has been making appointments and granting extensions right, left and centre. Apart from career diplomats, military officers and political appointees have been made ambassadors. However, the new government will want to send its own nominees. This is precisely why a lame-duck administration normally does not make appointments when its term is ending. But the present government has proceeded to send people hither and yon even in its last days in the expectation that it will be around for years, no matter who gets elected.

Scores of military officers, both serving and retired, have been seconded to public sector corporations either on deputation or contracts. Here again, any elected government will want to have its own people in place, and the future PM will wish to appoint the party faithful to juicy corporate jobs, just as this and previous governments have been doing.

This time around, the military junta has also stuffed both the federal and provincial governments with retired officers. This is quite apart from the military quota in the civil service decreed by Zia in the eighties. Removing all these senior officers from their cushy jobs will be no easy task, and has the potential of causing serious friction between the elected PM and the non-elected president.

In a democratic dispensation, elected members of parliament are answerable to their voters, and in poor countries like Pakistan, they have to fill the vacuum created by a lack of resources as well as poor governance. Given the high rate of unemployment, the major concern today is the lack of jobs, and the government, as the country's biggest employer, is widely perceived as the major source of respectable jobs for the burgeoning population of unemployed graduates. What does an MP say when his constituents demand that their sons be hired by the government? Military officers are largely exempt from these pressures, but then they have not run for elections.

What happens tomorrow if the PM orders the establishment secretary to cancel the contracts of all retired military officers serving in the government as well as public sector corporations, and to send all serving officers back to the barracks? So far, Musharraf has stated that the elected PM will have a free hand, but will he be free to purge the administration of military brass? We don't have long to find out.