AS the campaign for referendum moves to its fateful climax, it is becoming clear that the nation is profoundly divided on the issue. The two traditions of rule-by-public-representatives and state-rules-the-society, sponsored by politicians and army respectively, are colliding with each other once again.

President Musharraf’s campaign for referendum has evoked strong opposition from three major opinion blocs. One is the civil society in Pakistan. Intellectuals find it an example of steamroller politics. The legal community finds it both illegal and illegitimate, in the context of a gross violation of the Constitution. There are tremors of restrained but painful expressions of dissent emanating from the traditionally pliant judicial community. The press is agitated over the one-sided nature of the whole activity.

The second major source of opposition to referendum is the political stakeholders. The two mainstream political parties, the PPP and the PML (N), along with a number of smaller parties represented within and outside the ARD as well as MMA have heaped criticism on the regime. These parties and groups seemed to be resigned to the fact of the military government staying in power for three years. The prospects of that government continuing by other means even after the proposed elections in October has pushed the political community to the wall. Left with no choice, political parties feel obliged to oppose the referendum which threatens to straitjacket the electoral process later this year.

The third source of opposition, less noisy at the moment but more deadly in the long term, is the world opinion. Already, the feeling of betrayal is growing among the Commonwealth and European Union countries. The massive goodwill earned by the Musharraf government in recent months is disappearing. The referendum seems to represent the turn of the tide for the military government. The leading dailies and weeklies published from western capitals including Washington DC, London, Paris and Berlin among others, have already given a hostile verdict against the government’s effort to win legitimacy through what they consider illegitimate means.

On its part, the Musharraf government built its domestic political strategy on the basis of its recent diplomatic gains in the international forums. It seems to have operated on two assumptions. First, the West would continue to feel the need for stabilizing the present ruling set-up in Islamabad, in the context of the still-unfinished war against terrorism in Afghanistan. That meant that the West would look the other way if and when the govern