IT should have been a founding anniversary that vindicated. But vindicating the democratic transition into the PPP`s eager hands is not apparent in good governance though they try hard with demos and promos.

Unfortunately, there is more to managing a front-line state in crisis than marketing a brand. And it is sadly true that a brand which lets down the logo loses its niche.

Democracy-friendly commentators tend to forbear from sharp criticism; forgetting that relevant criticism is far more constructive than false praise or kind silence. Spin, whitewash, selectivity and self-censorship for the media are recommended for fear cogent criticism could substantiate the hateful case for authoritarian interventionism.

Indeed it could; but so could a government`s culpability or inadequacy. Where may people turn for damage control if, for instance, aggressively dysfunctional democratic governments erode legislative and judicial independence, renege on consensus or use methods in coalition politics no different from a dictator`s?

Its self-congratulatory 42nd birthday makes appropriate occasion to look at where the years have taken the PPP. Kudos to it for survival. But it is only too easy to ask whether in the process of evolutionary survival it has become a different species. Yet, it sticks to the rhetoric of yesteryear and, even more perilous, ignores the growth in civic consciousness. Pakistan is a disconcerting mix of things that have changed and things that have not; and an exiled or jumped-up leadership is not getting it right read the slogans and look at the images commemorating the party in power that punctuated Karachi`s eerily silent or terrifyingly aflame early-December streets. Partisans need a reality check.

ZAB founded a dynamic party to counter a hidebound presidential-military-bureaucratic combine. He was anti-establishment and so was the party. That was one of the reasons it always had a tough time despite its vote bank. Today the party is as `establishment` as they come and has a tough time because of its vote bank`s demands and expectations. And what of its grassroots that weathered the Zia blight and sprouted forth, strong yet again, just a year ago on Oct 18, despite having been so scorched and blackened by party conduct in a tenure that few grieved when President Leghari invoked the Eighth Amendment? It would be hubris if the PPP deems them evergreen.

However the party may see itself, the people no longer see it as a victim of anti-democratic politics. In a post-Iftikhar Chaudhry Pakistan the PPP that has not reverted to the pre-Musharraf-emergency constitutional dispensation is a democratic joker. Insult to injury, a proclaimed de jure sovereign parliament looks de facto to the president. The presidency runs the federal government in a way that would make the late Ghulam Ishaq Khan salivate. But the PPP snapped its fingers at civil society`s intelligentsia and non-party commoners soon after the elections. And as stodgily as the oligarchs of yore it says people don`t give a fig about constitutional fig leafs they live by bread.

And so between bloating benches, assigning contracts, renaming airports, roads and hospitals, the new government devises Benazir income-support schemes and subsidies. It does not pause to ask whether it has earned enough public confidence to make citizens regard the distribution of such monies as any less doubtful than Gen Zia`s zakat funding or Gen Musharraf`s food-stamp schemes for the hungry as in Mr Shaukat Aziz`s PML-Q. Meanwhile, parliament raises the salaries and perks of those who keep the stale system going. Dictators and encroachers need to finagle. A democratically elected government lacks that excuse. It is true that life with Article 58-2(b) may not perturb the masses, but life with cabinets 55 plus does.

The appalled silence that stifled Pakistan when Bhutto was hanged resonates to this day to give the party life. The destructive rage instantly manifested at Benazir`s monstrous assassination haunts the party quite differently. Her sacrificed life is used to whip up emotion. Playing with mass hysteria is a fascist not democratic tactic. Unlike the PPP-founding father who did not seek a deal with Gen Zia from his cell, the PPP`s lady martyr sat out years of self-exile without bridging the Gulf until the time was ripe to craft a deal with Gen Musharraf which precluded imprisonment.

America in the 1970s thought of making `a horrible example` of ZAB. In 2007 it operated to use Benazir as a splendid example of democratic worth, suited to replace their man Musharraf. Did fidelity to the spirit of the vote bank rather than the spirit of the deal cost the PPP heroine her life?

The stupendous welcome she received upon her homecoming in October last year was crafted as a global media event. It climaxed in a horrendous bomb blast after which she was entreated to be practical about fears for her life and forgo mass contact.

Obviously that would have made her rather like any other media-carried paper politician. Her strength was the people. She also grasped it was not just fear of mayhem that was keeping subsequent jalsa turnouts comparatively disappointing and that she had to sync with popular endorsement of the lawyers` movement. Might Pakistan`s democratic resurgence have turned too autonomous given Benazir`s international standing and enhanced acuity?

After her elimination no one wanted to provide Gen Musharraf with an excuse to postpone the electoral tryst. Nobody wanted the PPP`s second-tier leadership to be seen engaged in a protracted intra-party power struggle, and if that meant Mr Asif Zardari taking the reins so be it. Even before her will was disclosed, Mr Zardari`s Pakistan khappay stance, public humility, conciliatory negotiation went down well. But after the elections Mr and now President Zardari is opting for personal consolidation and only as much national consolidation as serves party supremacy with himself at the head.

People wanted Gen Musharraf out because they were tired of arbitrary rule. They want a rule of law where the law is not so much an indemnifier of political misuse of power as protection for the people and their Pakistan from that misuse. Iftikhar Chaudhry matters not because of the PCO he took and the PCO he did not take or the possible favours sought for his son versus possible favours sought for Dogar`s daughter. He is undeniable because the concrete negation and deconstruction of Musharraf-style realpolitik with law is vested in the restoration of the pre-Nov 3, 2007 position. Nor will people be fooled by a parliament that restores after benches have been reassuringly stacked. The PPP`s leadership is making it clear it does not subscribe to judicial independence. The independent executive comes first.

Its parliamentary attitude and gubernatorial endorsements show the bad old desire to centralise power and make parliament a personalised seal. Legislation remains inseparable from presidential preference. The difference is that this time the president is not a COAS but a party`s co-chairman. Civil dictatorship may prove even more destructive of the social fabric than a military dictatorship. Some people sense that already. So must the PPP. It is time for it to bury its ghosts.