WHEN Nawaz Sharif was deposed and General Pervez Musharraf, in order to set the country on the right path, unfurled his seven-point agenda (does anyone still remember the exact points?), the national scene stood denuded of everything except the confluence of two factors: the might of the army and the hopes of the people.

The political parties, having brought on their own bankruptcy, did not matter. The higher judiciary, never one to fly in the face of reality, did not count. On the lengthening plains there stood only the people and their army.

Whether or not General Musharraf was in any way embarrassed by the burden of hope thus placed on his shoulders, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that in the first few weeks following the takeover of October 12 he was looked upon by the vast majority of the Pakistani people as the messiah whose coming had long been awaited.

What was it that the people of Pakistan did not expect in those halcyon days? A clampdown on corruption, the start of a merciless accountability drive, the chastening spectacle of mighty heads rolling in the dust and, withal, the Pakistani nation, its pride restored, setting out with powerful strides on the road to progress and prosperity.

The two factors mentioned above reinforced each other: the nation's hopes brought a glistening sheen to the army's bayonets while the army's undisputed authority seemed to be a guarantee that the nation's wild hopes (for wild those indeed were) would be fulfilled.

In the more than a hundred days that have passed since that season of unmixed hope the scales have fallen from Pakistani eyes leading to a more measured and judicious accounting of the benefits or otherwise of military rule.

The first jolt came with the appointment of governors, ministers and members of the National Security Council, the last a hyped-up body whose functions are still unclear. Although imposing monuments to mediocrity have been raised in this country before, never was this done in so unambiguous a manner. Even if the deliberate aim was to make dismal selection an uncontested virtue, what actually came about could not have been improved upon.

But with the nation more than willing to give the military government a chance the celebratory mood lasted. It began to end when it slowly dawned upon the people of Pakistan that while the military government was full of good intentions it seemed to lack vision and a clear plan of action.

With no grand design before it, it is hardly surprising if there has been an obsessive preoccupation with day-to-day tasks: the desilting of canals, the sending of monitoring teams to districts (to remove encroachments and restrict unlawful bus addas) and an accountability drive which began with a splash but soon petered out like a military offensive running into the sand. Far be it from anyone to deny the importance or usefulness of tasks such as canal desilting. But if this be all that the military government has to show for itself in its first crucial months in office, scant justification is furnished for a full-blooded military coup.

General Musharraf, arguably, still retains his aura of bluff sincerity. But it is only so far that his government can travel on the strength of this asset alone. The only justification of military rule (apart, of course, from brute force) is performance and when performance is desultory legitimacy is called into question.

Maybe, in the inner sanctum of the government grand plans exist for revamping the archaic structure of the Pakistani state. Maybe, known only to the corps commanders, there is a holistic design to lift Pakistan by the bootstraps and take it screaming into the sun. Maybe. What the people are being treated to is a different spectacle: a government lost under the stars. All this in just a few months.

The one thing expected of the new team was to give the nation a sense of direction. It has done nothing of the sort, thus drawing attention to its most signal failure.

Two things have happened as a consequence. In the spreading light it is possible to distinguish the shape of things more clearly but at the same time the cynicism which has been the defining quality of the Pakistani nation for the past 20 years and more is rising to the surface once again: cynicism as corrosive as the air, as boundless as the ocean. This is a dangerous development.

With hope thus being laid into the grave, and the horizon bereft of anything else, what remains is the power of the bayonet, its victory undiluted and complete.

For Pakistan this is a novel situation. In every previous phase of Bonapartism in the nation's history, military rule, no matter how powerful or repressive, has had to face political challenges, whether outright or oblique. For the first time what is being seen is a military government which, although less repressive and more confused than any to have preceded it, faces no direct political challenge to its authority.

Ever since Benazir Bhutto and her resourceful husband transformed the once-mighty PPP into a private limited company, the PPP is in no position to throw a challenge to anyone. The Muslim League has given ample signs of its resolve by saying repeatedly that it does not believe in a policy of confrontation against the army (obviously inclined to think that a strong democratic position and confrontation are the same thing). Other parties are too small to make a difference.

If it were not for the international situation and the need to run every now and then to the IMF for handouts and bailouts General Musharraf could re-invent the Suharto model of eternal government and stay in power forever.

The only challenges to military rule are negative ones. Cynicism, frustration and a general air of discontent. If because of governmental non-performance these become more pronounced, the confidence and swagger of General Musharraf and his team, already under considerable pressure, are bound to be affected further.

Not that military rule is without its defenders. It still has its fervid partisans but their arguments are self-serving. If the shortcomings of military rule are pointed out, they counter by asking whether a return to the eras of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif is desired. This is a false argument.

General Musharraf is under no compulsion to return the country to its past. He is expected to move ahead by clearing the road to a cleaner democracy. But if he sticks around too long in Islamabad, ordering canal desilting and district administration monitoring, he will be repeating the mistakes of his military predecessors, all of whom, without exception, left things worse than they had found them.

It would be tragic to go down the same route again. But we seem headed that way because, let there be no mistake about it, prolonged military rule is as much a reversion to the past as a return to the soiled democracy of Bhutto and Sharif.