As I write this, over a month after the national and provincial elections last month, no government has yet been formed. Friends in London often ask what's going on. How do I even begin to explain the wheeling and dealing, the horse-trading and the arm-twisting that accompanies the birth of a coalition government in Pakistan when no party has won an outright majority?

The presence of an all-powerful general who has been used to calling the shots these last three years is a further complicating factor as he is a man of strong likes and dislikes. And looking over his shoulder are his mentors and supporters in Washington to whom Islamic extremists are anathema, specially if they are even remotely near the centre of power.

The thought of Maulana Fazlur Rehman deliberating on matters like Pakistan's nuclear programme and our cooperation with the Americans in their 'war on terrorism' is their worst nightmare. True, civilian prime ministers have not been permitted by GHQ to have much of a say in nuclear matters in the past, but American policy-makers dread the prospect of a fundamentalist general reaching the top in conjunction with a similarly oriented political leadership.

Compounding the problems of coalition-building are the predilections and biases of the principal players. General Musharraf is consumed with a deep and abiding dislike for both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. Indeed, he and his spokesmen have spent much of the last three years running them down. For him to accept the latter as a key partner in the coalition he will supervise is an admission that his coup - supposedly directed as it was against corrupt politicians - was without justification. Indeed, the entire anti-corruption campaign has petered out into irrelevance.

At the end of the day, all it has achieved is to disqualify some politicians while whitewashing others known to be equally crooked: the presence of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat at the head of the pro-Musharaf Muslim League proves just how arbitrary and partisan the entire screening process has been. These worthies, champion bank defaulters as proved by audited and published bank reports, were allowed to run while far smaller fry were disqualified from contesting the elections.

So clearly, Musharraf and his associates are not really serious about accountability; indeed, rumours of nepotism and corruption swirl around senior members of the outgoing government. An Internet-based newspaper, the South Asian Tribune, continues to embarrass the cabinet with accounts of serious abuse of power by various ministers. The only defence the government has managed to mount is a series of advertisements threatening to prosecute publications that use any of this material.

Shorn of the accountability prop, Musharraf now uses the excuse of wanting to protect the 'reforms' he has rammed through over the last three years to justify his occupancy of the presidency for the next five, and for arrogating sweeping and unprecedented powers to himself through highly dubious constitutional amendments.

Basically, these reforms can be reduced to the devolution of power the National Reconstruction Bureau has put into place through local body elections. While few disagree with the concept, the fact is that this infrastructure is in direct conflict with the notion of provincial government as it currently exists in the Constitution as well as in the public view. When provincial governments are (finally) formed, they will find rivals for power already entrenched.

As it is, shady, power-hungry politicians have found a haven in the king's party or the PML (Q) which will probably form the core of the coalition that will, sooner or later, be cobbled together. The fear that this motley crew might be left out in the cold by a coalition of the PPP and the clerics of the MMA threw such a scare in the establishment that the National Assembly meeting scheduled for last week was postponed to give the PML(Q) time to do some more wheeling and dealing. By this time this column appears, it is entirely possible that one of the combinations has won the approval of the establishment and will form the next government.

Basically, there are three possible permutations that can achieve power: PML (Q) plus MMA; PML (Q) plus PPP; or PPP plus MMA. Once any of these alignments fall into place, the smaller groups and independents will follow. The party left out of the coalition will sit in the opposition. However, the fact that the kaleidoscope can be rotated to produce other possibilities will mean that the government will stay open to blackmail all the time. This inherently unstable arrangement will play right into General Musharraf's hands as the prime minister will always be dependent on him for support.

Had the Americans not voiced strong reservations about the Islamist MMA grouping, chances are that it would have entered into a coalition with the king's party by now. This leaves the PPP in with a chance, although the military rulers have deep reservations about Benazir Bhutto.

However, the sudden elevation in the political profile of Asif Zardari seems to indicate a deal in the offing. According to one rumour, Benazir Bhutto will have to agree to stay out of politics for two years in exchange for all charges against her and her husband being dropped. If this seems unlikely given the steady stream of official invective directed at the PPP leader over the last three years, who could have imagined that Nawaz Sharif would be whisked away into comfortable exile in the dead of night a couple of years ago?

Despite the present (and future) uncertainties surrounding Pakistani politics, one thing is clear: Musharraf and the army will continue to occupy the centre of the political arena for the foreseeable future. And as long as they do, political institutions will not be able to develop, nor will intractable issues like Kashmir be addressed. There is a certain rigidity in the mental make-up of the military that precludes the flexibility necessary to solve tricky political problems, whether domestic or foreign. Indeed, as we have seen time and again, military rule only compounds problems and does not solve them. It seems that like it or not, we are in for a dose of the same.