GETTING what you want, Oscar Wilde remarked, can be as much a tragedy as not getting what you want.

Nawaz Sharif some day may come to appreciate this exotic western wisdom. Anyone who imagined that Musharraf`s departure would improve daily life in Pakistan one iota was sadly mistaken.

An utterly Alice-in-Wonderland political scenario since February has pitted two billionaires, whose fortunes were obtained, each other suspects, by rather questionable means, against a solid career soldier who, whatever his faults and glaring missteps, seems to have failed to feather his own nest in the traditional manner.

From the start the world press, out of routine laziness or pure ignorance, equated the ejection of Musharraf with the epic ousting of a Ceausescu or an Idi Amin or, one hopes one day, Robert Mugabe. Therefore, the major parties — mostly Sharif`s, really — were celebrated abroad for dumping the former dictator because, so the storyline goes, all dictators are alike in their vices, and all democrats are alike in their virtues.

What then has this single-issue zealotry accomplished? Now that Musharraf has gotten the heave-ho, which was fun while it lasted, the squabbling parties face the distressing fact that the public now will have no one to blame for the escalating internal mess but them.

Musharraf, a useful distraction, soon will be missed even by his very worst enemies. If the parties revert to the same inside-dealer style in play before Musharraf, they hardly will find themselves hailed in the streets. One of Sharif`s few accomplishments during his last inglorious stint as prime minister was to laboriously build a case against Zardari, then arrest and imprison him. Zardari has shown admirable forbearance. Since democracy formally returned, food and energy prices have been punishing all but the super rich while Taliban activity has crept up to the edges of Islamabad. The western powers — with the known quantity of Musharraf gone — are clearly nervous.

Musharraf declined to exploit Islam for political gain. He remained a sincere secular leader — Ataturk was his hero — although he was tentative when it actually came to implementing those secular principles. Sharif, by contrast, openly courts religious fundamentalists. Less commendable on Musharraf`s part was his installation of clueless army personnel in too many civilian posts, to no good effect for anyone. But his handling of the judges was indeed woeful and, finally, politically fatal.

Wily Sharif clearly was a financial backer for the former chief justice`s restoration both as a hammer blow against Musharraf and ultimately against Zardari too. Sharif must be extremely proud that he whipped up the public atmosphere into a hostile one that made Zardari buckle and go along with the pretty pointless impeachment. You didn`t need a political genius, however, to tell you that Zardari would drag his heels so as not to reappoint an unpredictable foe like Chaudhry to the Supreme Court.

The stock market is down, so that makes the news. Public finances too are in their usual parlous state. Less newsworthy is that Pakistan remains a country with a per capita income slightly over $500 annually. A third of the population is classified as absolutely-no-doubt-about-it poor, with the next third not doing enviably well either. Almost 50m people scratch by on two dollars a day or less. Half the population is illiterate. As much as half the population has no access to safe drinking water, let alone healthcare of any kind. These people need attention. So far there is little sign that they will get any.

The race for the presidency is the next distraction. Zardari is a shoe-in and soon we will see if as president he will relinquish to parliament all the powers that Musharraf wielded as president. Power, when in one`s own hands, no longer seems so obscene. Sharif certainly will not be thrilled if an elected Zardari retains Musharraf`s presidential powers. Indeed, the People`s Party may have missed an opportunity at this dangerous time when, in the interest of soothing the western regions, it could have backed a smaller party`s candidate from the Frontier or Balochistan for president.

The NWFP government, for example, is allied with Zardari and could patch up the broken down peace treaty there. Neither an NWFP or Balochistan candidate — lacking a nationwide constituency — would be tempted to abuse his presidential powers.

One can find pragmatic secularists among the leaderships in the Frontier and Balochistan like Mengal or the Awami National Party leader Asfandyar Wali. These savvy people can deal with local problems that neither the army nor political figures outside the provinces can manage. The war against terrorism can be won only through strategic reconciliations.

Fazlur Rehman`s party ruled the Frontier province before the elections but lost to secular forces. Yet he is still in parliament and has much sway over the madressahs. The agitation of the Taliban has taken the complicated form of Pakhtun nationalism. Baloch nationalists plus a section of pragmatic ulema is the best combination to sort out the problems.

Zardari was refreshingly frank when he told the BBC that the Taliban had the “upper hand” at the moment and that the war against terror was being lost. The whole point of Bush`s war on ter

ror is to fight it in such a way as to go on losing it for as long as possible, thereby creating many more highly motivated enemies than ever before, which justifies a growing repressive American domestic apparatus and the breakneck shovelling of public money into defence contractor pockets. Indeed, Bush and Cheney seem to view Pakistan as a civic model to which to aspire.

What will the American strategy be in the near future? America doesn`t know quite how to get out of the Afghan quagmire. The Americans trained the Mujahideen to drive out the Russians in the 1980s. Now they need Russia`s help to enable them to exit Afghanistan even as they cynically condemn Russia as the aggressor in Georgia. Will the PPP strive to bring about an economic structure in Pakistan which enables it to escape dependence on America or the IMF?

Otherwise, you have to make concessions to whoever is in office there. US policy towards a comparatively minor player like Pakistan hardly changes no matter who occupies the White Office.