Nothing is so calculated to make one want to run one's thumb over the edge of a sharp knife than the line heard so often this past year and a half that Musharraf is a nice guy: clean, transparent and honest, someone who talks straight and has the good of the country at heart.

If politics was about likeability and personal attractiveness we should not have had any problems in the first place. All the generalissimos who have strutted on the national stage were attractive figures. To look at photographs of Iskander Mirza, Ayub, and Yahya in their prime or at the height of their power is to be reminded of the bearing and personality for which they were once praised. Even Zia did not fail to impress visitors with his humility and good nature.

Of our democrats Bhutto had a great personality but that did not save him from his walk to the gallows. Most other politicians who rose to high office look like dry sticks compared to their military counterparts. Who would have wanted to spend an evening with Junejo? Or with Nawaz Sharif for that matter? Benazir, with her ready wit and gift for one-liners, could be the epitome of charm. But by harping on her righteousness and never admitting to any wrong (traits which have not deserted her) she could also be insufferable. By all accounts, Asif Zardari is a friend's friend, a boon companion, and an easy person to get along with. But this exactly is the point. If being nice was all there was to politics, Zardari should have been the answer to Pakistan's problems.

Musharraf's military predecessors were unmitigated disasters not because they lacked charisma and charm. They failed and left Pakistan worse than before because the institution which was the source of their power was at once their biggest strength and greatest handicap. Their thinking and vision were shaped by this institution. Their prejudices were a product of their military training. They were thus pre-programmed to see things in a certain light and brought up to believe that the military was the repository of all the virtues, politics was a deceitful game and politicians were venal and corrupt figures who deserved nothing better than to be handled with a stick.

And since, for all their outward impressiveness, the generals who ruled Pakistan were essentially pedestrian figures, with little imagination and no vision, they could never go beyond the limitations of the army mind. This is not to say that Pakistan's military saviours have not played small games of deception, have not said one thing and done another, or have not been devious in other ways. They have indeed and often more so than their civilian peers. But this kind of cleverness does not translate into great leadership. Pakistan's military rulers have all been clever without being intelligent. Beginning by reviling politicians, they often proved more adept at politics than regular professionals. But this is what they remained right till the end, even when the shadows began closing in on them: clever jugglers. None could make the grade to anything resembling statesmanship.

Why? Two factors, I think, account for this failure. Firstly, for some reason the intellectual tradition has never been very strong in the ranks of the Pakistani general staff, intellectual brilliance being the exception not the norm. Secondly, the Pakistan army is a deeply conservative institution, intrinsically oriented to the preservation of the status quo, and therefore averse to any profound or radical altering of the socio-economic foundations of Pakistani society.

The expectation of radical steps on its part is therefore wholly misplaced. Whenever the military steps into the political arena it will always do what comes the readiest to it: installing streetlights, terrorizing the sanitary staff of municipal organizations, starting anti-encroachment drives and in the process making life difficult for street-sellers and cart-vendors. And at a bigger level talking loudly about accountability and recovering looted money. This is all. This is what it was like under previous military governments. This is what it has been like under Musharraf. Beating empty drums, glorifying the small and petty: trust the army always to do this and then to describe its efforts as nation-building.

This is not deliberate deception. To think so is to get the whole thing wrong. The army as an institution is incapable of anything better. To the pursuit of the small and ephemeral it brings a vast amount of zeal and enthusiasm. Even when grappling with municipal drains and streetlights, an endeavour which ends by leaving army units exhausted, the army thinks it is reordering the fundamentals of society. Meanwhile the Chief - Yahya, Zia or Musharraf - becomes a jack of all trades. He devotes some time to the army and some to the civil administration. Since he is neither Napoleon nor superman he ends up being part-time army chief and part-time administrator, beholden to his generals for the smooth running of the army and to his civilian technocrats for running the government.

Small wonder and contrary to popular belief, the worst excesses of nepotism and cronyism in Pakistan take place under military regimes, with generals and bureaucrats being promoted and kept in office long past their usefulness simply because the General-in-chief has had so many favours to return. In every military government favourites emerge whose power is less a reflection of outstanding merit as of their services to the ruler of the day. On a broader level, the privileged status of the higher echelons of the Pakistan army is not a fortuitous development. It is a direct outcome of the need felt by successive generalissimos to keep their core constituency happy.

So wherein lies the fault? Not in the qualities or defects of character of Pakistan's military rulers but in the structural and intellectual limitations of their rule. It is not that one-man rule or autocracy is always and everywhere bad. England apart, the Europe that we see today is a product of various forms of kingship and authoritarianism. Democracy made a late arrival in much of the continent. East Asian prosperity, including China's emergence as an economic powerhouse, is based upon the politics of authoritarianism. It is just that the same solution does not fit every situation. The Pakistani model of authoritarianism which derives its legitimacy and currency from the army is flawed because the instrument at hand, the Pakistan army, is not equipped to deliver the wages of good administration (the necessary condition for economic prosperity).

The Pak Army is not the Kuomintang of Taiwan. It is not the Communist Party or People's Liberation Army of China. It is not the British civil service of Hong Kong nor the army of South Korea. It can only produce the figures it has done; it can produce no Lee Kuan Yews. This is not to say it has no strengths. It has them indeed and they are not to be scoffed at. But among these strengths, as the history of the last 50 years has demonstrated, lies not the art of government or administration. The Pakistan army can do many things and it can do them better than the armies of many other countries. But it simply lacks the ethos or grounding to bring about a social revolution or lay the foundations of an enduring political order.

This is what makes Musharraf's assumption of the presidency such a sad event. For in laying bare his ambition, and perhaps that of his closest generals, this move reveals, as nothing else could, that we have learned nothing from the past. That Musharraf at a personal level may be a very nice soul is an irrelevant circumstance. He has embarked upon a course that can only spell disaster for the country. For the continuity of which reforms is he so concerned? What reforms has his government brought about? If anything, the last year and a half has added to the sum of national suffering and confusion. So, apart from the prompting of a paranoid ambition, what justification is there for the emerging Suhartoization of Pakistan? In Asia there are bad authoritarian models and good and we seem to be going for the worst of the lot.

Pakistan came into being as the result of a democratic process. Let no confusion surround this central truth. Authoritarianism of the military kind fits nowhere into its founding principles. This kind of rule fails also the test of pragmatism for it has brought nothing but disaster for Pakistan. The conclusion is obvious. The only service Musharraf can do Pakistan is to return it to democracy. That the Benazirs and Nawaz Sharifs of democracy may have been corrupt and inept figures is a matter of detail. It takes away nothing from the substance of the argument that time and again the military model has failed in Pakistan and, nice strongman or not, will fail again. Jaded as the refrain may sound, the only experiments we can afford to make are on the democratic plane.