IF PAKISTANIS ask what aborts their democratic governments, they might ask even more pertinently what impels their entrenched dictators towards democratic forms.

The fact is that democratic functioning is a real political demand. A dictatorship cannot manage the diversity and pluralities that constitute Pakistan’s polity without becoming untenably arbitrary. Dictatorship is the answer to an emergency in government. Once it has served the immediate purpose it becomes its own emergency and demands a democratic exit.

The problem is that our dictators seek a democratic continuance for themselves: a conceptual absurdity. Gen Musharraf may negotiate a parliamentary blessing for his LFO, but in the end it will do no more for him than LFOs, PCOs and referendums were able to do for other Pakistani dictators. For the people and problems of Pakistan will continue to require a genuinely democratic solution.

The Musharraf era started with a coyly expedient nomenclatural inconsistency. The general’s coup and the judicial departures that met the new regime’s necessities were never designated as martial law and its adjuncts. One outcome of not calling a spade a spade is that we are categorising as parliamentary democracy what is a travesty. Furthermore, the failures and offences of this freakish parliament are easily attributed to civil democratic representatives rather than militaristic changelings. Democracy as a practicable mode is discredited without having been re-installed.

Officialdom’s use of glib, repetitive jargon has induced woolly-headedness. ‘Enlightened moderation’: Is that the way to describe a dictator’s government intimidated into adopting a stand? ‘Constitutional package’: A rather casual processing of what should be a well-considered principled enshrinement of structures animating good governance. We pussyfoot around the content of this constitutional package, using ‘uniform’ and ‘office’ as euphemistic terms of reference for what it is supposed to discuss/accomplish.

This verbal shorthand helps keep public focus away from the issue of civil supremacy and parliamentary democracy as enunciated in the 1973 Constitution, which is actually what matters in the standoff over the LFO. Parliamentary consensus as to ‘uniform’ and ‘office’ may resolve the dictator’s crisis while damaging civil democratic norms. Possibilities of Gen Musharraf validating himself as president by obtaining a vote of confidence from the house are aired and projected as a democratic measure since it uses parliament.

Given this mode, it is only fair to allow civil politicians too their doctrine(s) of necessity. Thus, they had to stay in the dubious parliamentary swim that crested in Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali. The compulsion to participate in last year’s electoral effort must not be taken as tacit recognition of the authorities instituting the election. It was a meaningful compromise in the face of certain necessities. The Muslim League (N) and the PPP may co-operate for the restoration of civil democracy and also be allowed the logic of a return to their separate party barracks once the present political emergency is past. It is all being done in the supreme national interest. This includes negotiating a safe exit for the reluctant coup-maker, who, even if he did not intervene because of the impending 15th amendment, did inadvertently help bury it.

It is usually seen as an unhealthy appetite for a return to power; but, quite seriously, the most laudable aspect of the exiled politicians’ doctrine of necessity is the readiness of Ms Bhutto and the Sharifs to cooperate and negotiate with the general. He would be wise in returning the courtesy. It is not just that everyone has something to forgive and forget.

However much it may gall the army, these political leaders, recognized as corrupt in more ways than one, still have an electoral link that bridges the communication gap between the governed and their government in a way that a military-bureaucratic-corporate combine has eminently failed to do. Pointlessly prolonged, this failure may prove unsustainable for the polity.

Gen Musharraf is that paradoxical thing — a passive interventionist. It characterized his coup and his U-turn: both were thrust upon him. He is now averse to being thrust aside. The electorate finds this reluctant man of destiny tenacious about holding on to power. He clearly believes he is the best leader for Pakistan domestically, and the preferred one externally. But is it still a time when a military takeover/dictator is the best medicine for the body politic?

The U-turn has come full circle. The western coalition is not satisfied about Pakistani disablement of fanatic segments. Indeed they may be deep-rooted and hard to eradicate. The problem is the very effort, clumsily made, exacerbates them.

When the government deploys the national army or paramilitary forces for punitive action in the tribal belt, the manoeuvre is popularly perceived as necessitated by American objectives. In the preceding military dictator Gen Zia’s time, popular religious sentiment was not antagonised by the servicing of American interests in Afghanistan. For American tactics favoured the ‘jehadi’ content of armed conflict in Afghanistan and supportive sympathy in Pakistan. Western concern with Islam in Afghanistan is much more substantial and much less hypocritical in Gen Musharraf’s time; but this time round Muslim tradition and religious sentiment are perceived as a menace. And in Pakistan the Zia tradition of using Islam as political fodder (whether it is packed and processed as enlightened moderation or fundamentalism rampant) remains alive. As long as Gen Musharraf is a politicized personality he has to cope with this.

The military regime’s gravest problem is the institutional involvement of the army, and its active deployment, when national popular reaction is conflicted and politicized. Gen Musharraf is both self-proclaimed president and tenure-self-renewable COAS. There is no separately perceived civil government to absorb shock-waves and disperse them or fall to be replaced by another. Our overly civil PM is identified with the regime and so would be any regime-rooted successor. Prime Minister Jamali derives nothing of his national stature from the ballot-box.

On the other hand, Ms Bhutto’s public stature is tiresomely evident. Mian Nawaz Sharif, in ISI-cahoots though he often was, evolved an independent vote-bank. He too had/has a national constituency to address, and a platform from which to speak (which he used effectively in the acutely critical contexts of Kargil and Chagai). The Q-Leaguers and PPP-Patriots cramming the house have no general standing. It is only the leadership of the religious right that enjoys both an extensive popular strength and a parliamentary presence. But, ironically enough, they stand to lose this useful duality the moment they publicly side with the general over the LFO.

Why, then, when seeking vital national consensus, does the compromise and dialogue over the LFO have to keep the most relevant and potentially meaningful civil political leadership away from it all? Only Gen Musharraf can answer.