WE cannot wish away fixations in our neurotic polity (which also features some rather outstanding psychopaths and cretins) so let's turn to the harping on conspiracy against democracy in Pakistan.

It's almost a national hobby. Let's get structurally quizzical (if not analytical) about playing the game

Chief villain? Multiple choice (i) army (ii) judiciary (iii) multinationals (iv)other(s); nominations welcome e.g. neighbours or neo-cons. That last could also be listed as (v) vested interests; but usually when talking conspiracy theory against Pakistan's democratic government we mean local domestic vested interests.You know the stuff! Feudals, industrialists, retired bureaucrats. Serving bureaucrats, alas, are out because they serve the democratically government of the day. But don't lose heart; there is yet another choice where, whatever the grade or calibre, any individual may qualify as conspiracy-enrichment material in the category of (vi) rogue elements. These can be in khaki, black coats, Armani, even homespun khaddi. Best disregard detail as in headgear which sits atop religious and ethnic reverence.

Rule one in the game is that there is no multiple choice about Chief Victim. It's the PPP victors of 2008; as it always is in any Bhutto-(especially by marriage)-led moment. Minus one is the way to play with cipher.

Tools? Multiple means (i) media (ii) mayhem (iii) mistrust (iv) madressahs (v) NGOs (vi) Kerry-Lugar bill. Oh no! That is pro democracy. It weans the country off bondage to IMF conditionalities and grants it life-lease gratitude to the globally benevolent uncle. Besides, Pakistan's government of the day favours the Kerry-Lugar bill and intellectual property rights in software, for politically correct conspiracy theorising gives the patent to games plotting against the government of the day. That is the essence of crime against democracy. Minus one, and down comes not the castle in the sand but the bastion against dictatorship.

Drone attacks are a Must Have in the game. Whatever side of the conspiracy line a theoriser is on, drone attacks hit the spot. The democratic government has not prevented them. No choice or laissez-faire? Or do they serve some undisclosed purpose? Remember the cornerstone of the conspiracy game is that the government cannot conspire. Its secrets are kept in the national interest.

Does the army favour the drone attacks or just civilly submit? Either choice would suggest the army and the democratic government are on the same side containing Al Qaeda-Taliban-linked terror. The snag is this conclusion doesn't fit anti-democratic conspiracy theory. So how about the judiciary and drone attacks? After all, no choice is a doctrine of necessity and every Pakistani knows what that does to democracy.

But hold on — has anyone appealed the matter? The most one can charge the judiciary with is dereliction of suo moto requiring the federation to rectify the droning on that is bringing democratic rule a bad name. An impartial jury may have to put the tick mark on 'others' rather than army or judiciary for chief villain.

Caution! Zeroing in on others could tempt players into linking drone attacks' collateral damage with anti-democratic terror and oil-links and greasy palms; things like Blackwater, Halliburton and post 9/11 expansionism. That is entering the big league and Pakistan conspiracy theory is a kind of local government power game. So villains too are best left local, accessing multiple tools here. But then whose tools are they? Desist. Such speculation again extends the parameters of conspiracy and if we begin to re-delineate, where does it end? We might wind up with new targets altogether and a whole new game.

Personally, I prefer to take the fun away from gaming and turn serious about the present national stress and ascribe it not to conspiracy but the far more alarming factor of genuine, quite blatant, error. Dizzy with having made it to the top of the heap in the first place, the PPP-led coalition government hasn't stopped reeling. It suits it to tout conspiracy against its functioning rather than come to grips with its own non-democratic realities.

The fallacy in conspiracy theorising as propounded by the self-identified victims lies in an equation of the democratic system with the government of the day. There is a wider prism on democracy which relates to the legislature, executive and judiciary institutionally, not in terms of individual cabinets. Minus one indeed solves nothing for it is the parliament which is supreme in a parliamentary democracy. If the present parliament is not an assemblage of marionettes in the hands of the un-subtracted one, it identifies with that figure.

The Pakistani people it seems are, at the very least, significantly pluralised. And that is where one comes to a real endemic danger to Pakistani democracy is an elected parliament in its collective post-electoral functioning distanced and separate from the sentiment and interest of the collective electorate? If there are significant public doubts, what serves democratic direction better, dissolving parliament or solidifying it? Perhaps too many public representatives presently fear defeat lies ahead in fresh national elections and refuse to allow the natural and conventional democratic way of self-correction.

If a perceived conspiracy and its manipulated public outcry is all about subtracting one, and parliament places no confidence in such a move, there may in time be proposals for a referendum on minus one. Pakistan's presidents have been known to use that mode with enabling legislature when in distress, and it has always won them time. But to what end? Ask Zia, ask Musharraf.

The immediate pragmatic outcome, though, of the customary resounding 'yea', would be that our undoubtedly democratically elected servitors will have smothered the parliamentary form of democracy and given us a presidential omnipotence. Without the extenuating circumstance of any doctrine of necessity other than this They come out of the same matrix whose alloy is corrupted. That is why it has been smashed so often and so easily.