BENAZIR Bhutto`s elimination from the scene has made an enormous political difference in that we no longer know quite what to expect of the PPP.

Asif Ali Zardari took his initial unfaltering steps unexceptionably; nevertheless he is an unknown factor as co-chairman of a party where his and Benazir`s son functions as chairman and is likely to be no more than emblematic for years to come. Presently, the party officially describes its leadership as collegial but what the college denotes is too plastic for comfort.

The reality is that voters are going to the polls without any firm understanding of the intentions and inclinations of major contesting parties in terms of their post-electoral posture. It is a dead certainty that the parties will protest if they lose, but what will they do if they win? It is anyone`s guess what the principle guiding the ruling coalition will be should the latter be required for the formation of a government. Any party may feasibly combine with any to any effect. Even if they all come together in a national government, exactly what would the national government have in mind for the nation? It is not yet clear to what extent the various parties intend to underwrite or perpetuate the Musharraf era.

Mian Nawaz Sharif, though he is mocked for flip-flopping, is the only one to be unequivocal, and this boldness may well leave those elected on the PML-N ticket outside a carefully contrived post-electoral national/consensual paradigm (admittedly alongside their leader and other elements with considerable gravitas in civil society). Such is the grand mess President Musharraf`s incursion into politics over the last seven years has created that though virtually everyone feels elections should not be postponed the most representative voices might be those that get drowned in the electoral process!

People want the military to vacate civil political space and they want vindication of the judiciary that safeguards the public rather than truant regimes. Emblematically that means a restoration of the deposed judges. Which Mr Asif Zardari (to say nothing of sundry `influentials` embedded in various brands of the PPP, PML and MQM) as well as eminences and minions in the military and bureaucracy would view with trepidation. This is to be expected given the NRO factor, May 12 hearings, privatisation proceedings, missing persons issue and more such.

The treasonable offence of subverting the Constitution is something the masses silently learnt to live with. But they are more vocal about demanding relief from the lesser indignities of dictatorial rule. They are not asking for presidential heads but they would like it demonstrated and recognised that a former army chief and his cohorts are in greater need of pardon than any political party chief and his/her cohorts. In some ways, this election is even more about devising and ensuring a non-traumatic exit strategy for President Musharraf than it is about transitional democracy.Actually, the latter devolves on the former. The president`s recent international ramblings make it ubiquitously plain that even as a mere civilian he is convinced he has a monopoly on Pakistan`s font of common wisdom and is justified in quashing that which challenges his judgment of

the supreme national interest.

Pakistanis will sooner or later demand a government that is accountable to them and where they are also acknowledged as judges of the supreme national interest which is perhaps what democratic governments, as distinct from democratic elections, are all about. Only the latter can yield the former; but alas democratic governments do not always follow in the wake of the electoral process.

Mr Bhutto, who it is no longer politically correct to critique, was perhaps Pakistan`s most outstanding example of such democratic delinquency. Should the new democratic government repeat the mistakes of the post-Zia and with-Musharraf regimes, people will feel cheated. Riots against blasphemous Danish cartoons and the rampaging in the post-Benazir`s assassination days have shown how destructive outbursts of public wrath have become.

The state and its citizens cannot take that kind of disruption and paralysis any more. Whatever the crowds` political affiliations — whether clandestinely organised goons, common criminals or saboteurs — the parties are also culpable. The ordinary law-abiding citizen will seek the implementation of the foundational principle of any social contract namely, law and security.

It would be a tragic irony if the electoral process results in a situation where people themselves are pleading for troops and are ready to welcome another coup.

Left to themselves, Pakistanis show remarkable civic responsibility. However, the official agencies` meddling in domestic politics — whether in accord with Pakistan`s COAS, chief executive or president — is a matter of historical record. So murky is the existing civil and military political backyard that speculation abounds. Where once a countercoup was innovated, an auto-coup may now be fabricated. This surmise seems tortuous but not paranoiac.

For politicians on whom the people depend for a slow journey back to a democratic form as well as substance, it is vital to avoid pitfalls. Mian Nawaz Sharif has shown some public humility at his misuse of his heavy mandate but the PPP is veering towards an alarming cultism in its electoral run-up.

Undoubtedly, the assassinated Benazir Bhutto`s PPP has a committed core vote bank in all the provinces. But to say that only the PPP and her `legacy` can save the federation is tantamount to weakening it. The sad truth is that though any one element can impair federalism only a totality of collective effort can strengthen the Pakistan common Pakistanis know and love — despite all their selfish provincialism and apparent callousness to suffering in the `other` fellow`s spot — be it a ravaged Dera Bugti or a decimated Fata picket.

Will the president who refuses to see beyond his nose, the military with its conditioned reflexes, civil leaders of the like of Mian Nawaz Sharif and now Asif Zardari, and over-familiar king-making pawns have the strength and large-heartedness to accept the diminution of their separate bids for self-advancement and power in the supreme national interest? The elections and the way they trade horses in midstream will tell us.