At the ending of this millennium the Sharaf Sharif era of our country has drawn to its close. Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif has been banished and General Pervez Musharraf rules the roost.

But, with Pakistani politics and its super-mercurial flow, there is no guarantee that the man who robbed the nation (at best the first crook, or at worst the second) will not stage a successful comeback. The probability is he will stay away for as long as Musharraf remains in the saddle, but he could return as prime minister with Musharraf as president - or, the ways of this country and its ignorant people being exceedingly strange, even vice versa.

On October 17 1999, five days after the general rode in with his men, he spoke : "My dear countrymen, my aims and objective shall be : 1) rebuild national confidence and morale; 2) strengthen the federation and remove inter-provincial disharmony and restore national cohesion; 3) revive the economy and restore investor confidence; 4) ensure law and order and dispense speedy justice; 5) depoliticise state institutions; 6) devolution of power to the grass-roots level; 7) ensure swift and across-the-board accountability."

Objectives 1) to 3), admittedly difficult, have not been achieved, as have not 5) and 6). Objectives 4) and 7), relatively simple and achievable, remain similarly unachieved.

There is absolutely no reason why, with the army exercising abundant power, law and order cannot be enforced. It is not understandable why saboteurs and obscurantists are allowed to hold sway and why violators of the law are not found and punished. As do the politicians, our army men maintain that a foreign hand, or a hidden hand, is at play and cannot be found. This is inexcusable.

Oddly, Musharraf's objective listed at number 4 was the premier objective of the country's Founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. On August 11 1947 he told the members of the constituent assembly : "The first and foremost thing that I would like to emphasize is this - remember that you are a legislative body and have all the powers. It therefore places on you the gravest responsibility as to how you should take your decisions. The first observation I would like to make is this - you will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the state".

The general exercises and possesses more power than any legislative body could ever have. Yet people lose their lives, their properties are destroyed, and religious beliefs are tampered with. Obscurantists and street forces are able to threaten and intimidate our military men.

As for the judiciary, it has been so badly mauled that it is unable to right itself. Charging those who say this with alleged contempt of court helps not a whit. When it comes to justice and accountability, the only court which could successfully deal with thieves and defaulters such as the Sharifs was the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in England.

Hudaiba Paper Mills Limited (first defendant), Mian Shahbaz Sharif (second defendant), Mian Mohammad Sharif (third defendant), and Mian Mohammad Abbas Sharif (fourth defendant), borrowed money from Investment Funds Limited, operated by Al-Tawfik Company. A master of the court, not even a judge, served an order on the defendants on September 4, 1998 and the court attached valuable properties in London owned by the Mians : 16, 16A, 17 and 17A Avenfield House at 117-128 Park Lane, London. End of story. The Mians paid up. The loan plus interest, amounting to approximately $450 million, was repaid within 16 months.

The master of the court recorded the "consent order" signed by the solicitors of both sides on January 25, 2000. The money, the Mians say and which we don't believe, was paid back by an Arab "friend" of theirs out of mere love and affection. At the request of both parties the court ordered that the details of the repayment not be disclosed. The lenders and the court were satisfied that justice had been done and naturally they had no objection to a "friend" paying the debts of a "friend".

The Mians owed almost half a billion dollars which they held abroad and which they repaid. How many of us have a "friend" who out of love and affection will repay for us our debts totalling millions of dollars?

Now to the nitty-gritty of money, the rupee, which once was made up of 16 annas, or 64 paisas, or 192 pies. As a schoolboy I was given four annas a week as pocket money as were most of my friends. The father of a school friend, Rustomjee Perozshah Kharas, an auctioneer to the Crown, a man who valued money, used to give the same royal sum of four annas to his son, my friend Jhangu Kharas, with the admonition "Khajo, peejo, ney majha kerjo, pun kharab rastay Napier Road ni turaf jasso tau autey weekay nahin apas". (Eat, drink and make merry, but if I find you are straying into the wicked Napier Road area you will get nothing next week.)

Our present-day financial wizards Moeen Qureshi (chairman), Sartaj Aziz (vice chairman), Professor Doctor Hafiz Pasha (managing director), Javed Jabbar (director) and other luminaries and office bearers of the Social Policy and Development Centre, core funded by the good Canadians, have produced a report for the year 2000. In true Pakistani style it is entitled "Social Development in Pakistan - Towards Poverty Reduction", when it should have been given the title "Bankrupt Pakistan". Apart from this it is a fairly accurate report.

Moeen Qureshi is a highly intelligent person who has spent most of his life in a civilized society. For three months in 1993 he was our caretaker prime minister and it remains beyond my comprehension how a man such as he could have succumbed to the charms of Benazir Bhutto, that accomplished robber of the people's money, and appointed Maula Bakhsh Abbasi, a known confirmed robber, to head our then reasonably solvent National Development Finance Corporation. Abbasi proceeded to rob the NDFC bone dry and is now as can be expected a declared absconder.

Sartaj Aziz, once Nawaz's finance minister, was privy to the shenanigans of his boss but did not have the decency to either resign or try to do something to prevent Nawaz from robbing.

Hafiz Pasha is a talented man who tried his hand at planning and policy-making during Nawaz's second round. He failed and gave up. Now he has gone to the UN in New York as an assistant secretary for economic affairs. We wish him luck.

How much robbing can the people endure and our country bear ? The first paragraph of the synopsis of this report sums it up : "Today, 46 million people of Pakistan are poor and one in every three families is unable to meet its basic requirements of nutrition and other needs. During the decade of the '90s [Bhutto/Sharif years] the number of poor has increased by as much as 25 million. If present trends continue then we expect that within the next three years the number of poor will increase by another 14 million and approach 60 million, almost 40 per cent of the population. Clearly poverty has emerged as the principal problem requiring urgent attention if a large-scale social breakdown is to be averted, with its concomitant implications for law and order".

For years to come we will remain broke. All the government organizations and institutions, many of which do not justify their existence, and the armed forces are all living beyond their means. The country's revenue earnings amount to some Rs.450 billion per year. Debt servicing takes care of around Rs.350 billion and the armed forces consume Rs.230 billion (130 b. salaries and other recurring expenses ; 50 b. defence spending - tanks, aircraft, ships, etc - in Benazir's time this cost us 100 b per year ; 25 b. pensions ; 20 b. ISI and paramilitary - rangers/coastguards/levies/constabulary ; 5 b. nuclear deterrent, capital and recurring).

Any Ataturks in sight ? Moaning and groaning and giving in to threatened riots and marches on the capital does not help. Tomorrow is the first day of the next millennium. We must thank our stars that despite the destroyers of our country who have led us since Jinnah died in 1948 we have so far only lost half of it. Now, on the foreign affairs front, would it not help if we were to adopt a less belligerent posture?