ELECTIONS are some time away — no one, not even the present grandmasters in a position to say when exactly they will be held — but the political class can be seen stretching its legs and exercising its muscles in preparation for the approaching season.

Our democracy may be imperfect, which is putting it quaintly, army headquarters and our unlucky stars having seen to the imperfection. But the democratic tradition for some odd reason remains strong in Pakistan. This is why elections, even when their outcome is uncertain — that is to say, even when there is no surety whether they will lead to democracy or dictatorship — elicit so much interest and even passion when they take place.

It is because of our democratic tradition that even our dictators are sooner or later desperate for some form of democratic legitimisation — some form of democratic baptism, so to speak — no matter how dicey or even plain crooked that process may be.

In this respect, we are great sticklers for form, our saviours keen to have the right marmalade on their toast. With absolutely straight faces members of the military and judiciary collaborate in the staging of this pantomime. There is a great novel waiting to be written about this collaboration. Our literary class is failing in its duty by not taking up this challenge.

The phenomenon of elections in Pakistan is curious. Even the prospect of heavy manipulation doesn’t dampen popular enthusiasm for an election. The political class just can’t keep away, elections part of the very air they breathe, the thing which buys them local relevance and influence.

But elections are tough. Ask me, having contested two, the first time successfully when I made it, much to my later regret, to the Punjab provincial assembly, and the second time unsuccessfully in 2002, when, if legend is to be believed, the real election commission, ISI, was entrusted with the task of ensuring ‘positive results’. Both times I said ‘never again’, this was folly and a waste of time, and I wasn’t cut for the same cloth.

Now as another election approaches, I find myself itching with the same old fever. (Last week I caught myself scouring ads for a four-by-four wheeler, essential mode of transport for a Pakistani election.) Reminds me of what the late Siddique Kanju, minister of state for foreign affairs in Nawaz Sharif’s second administration, once told me: that an election was a bit like childbirth. While undergoing its pain you said ‘never again’. But when the pain was over you were ready for the next round.

It takes a particular temperament to fight an election. Most armchair analysts who wax eloquent about politics wouldn’t know what to do in a union council election. Doubtless, this is the reason why those of the tribe who nurse political ambitions prefer the Senate route to fame and glory, the Senate being the most efficient road bypass in Pakistani politics. What you need to do is curry favour with the government or the leadership of a political party. And if you have a little talent for hustling and a suitcase or two of ready cash, you make it through the Senates hallowed doors.

The government these days means the military establishment. I know, and so do others, of some well-known senators who owe their elevation to Pakistan’s real election commission, and indeed our most permanent political party, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). All in the ‘national interest’. Ah, the national interest: what crimes and acts of folly have not been committed in thy name?

But whether elections are near or far, what will pump life and purpose into the opposition parties? If the Musharraf regime has its problems, which it does, the opposition parties for their part look hopeless. In their more heady moments their leaders talk of a ‘grand alliance’ but to see them working at cross-purposes is to realise what a pipedream this is.

You can divide the opposition in two categories: the PPP and PML-N, claiming to be the ‘real’ opposition; and then the holy fathers of the religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), who don’t miss a beat even when labelled the dummy opposition.

The holy fathers are past masters at make-believe war: all noise and bluster but nothing for real beneath the foam, or nothing remotely threatening for the government. They are the government in the Frontier and they share power in Balochistan. Not easy for them to sacrifice all this.

The Jamaat-i-Islami’s Qazi Hussain Ahmed continues to blow hot and cold but he has given so many calls for a movement (the last movement was supposed to take place in September) that he now faces a serious crisis of credibility.

Moreover, he is hamstrung by his MMA partner, the wily Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who has earned the reputation of being Gen Musharraf’s deadliest secret weapon. Whenever storm clouds gather on the horizon, the Maulana can almost be counted upon to dissipate them.

Not to be discounted is the PPP’s reluctance to have any truck with the MMA, no doubt because it doesn’t wish to soil its ‘liberal’ credentials. (As if the holy fathers needed an excuse to keep away from an anti-government alliance.) The PPP has other problems too. Over its leadership lurks the fatal shadow of the Swiss cases which if brought to a close could imperil Benazir Bhutto’s political career. The PPP also has an intense desire to come in from the cold.

Add to this the fact that there are no real differences between the government and the PPP, and the basis of a working arrangement or an outright deal begins to look a fair possibility.

But blocking such an arrangement are the fears of Gen Musharraf’s leading political supporters, the Q League president Shujaat Hussain and his cousin Pervaiz Ellahi, the Punjab chief minister, both of whom are intelligent enough to realize that a Musharraf-PPP deal will spell the end of their importance as the political topguns of the present order. Not surprisingly, Shujaat hits the ceiling whenever there is word in the newspapers about a deal.

This leaves the PML-N. As the only serious opposition to the Musharraf government — after all, the generalissimo attained his present position by ousting the PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif from power — it is keen to gather all the opposition parties on a single platform so as to mount a credible challenge to the regime.

But despite the Charter of Democracy which Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto signed, a document which looks more and more like a stillborn child, the PML-N is ploughing a lonely furrow. It will take a miracle or something particularly inept on the government’s part for the opposition parties to get their act together.

Maybe some of this confusion goes away as elections come nearer. Nothing like an approaching deadline to induce focus and clarity. It happens in the newspaper business, journalists inclined not to shed laziness unless a deadline is on their heads. The same thing we see in politics, the nearness of an event triggering a flurry of action. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Of course, I know the standard mantra that the government is in a fix and its options are dwindling. That may be so but if we look at the other side of the hill the government’s position doesn’t look as desperate, and the omens for the opposition not as good, as pundits and armchair analysts often make them out to be.

Favouring the government is a little-cited circumstance: the openness of the media and the absence of restrictions on political activity. Political suffocation is a necessary condition for the building up of passion and anger. But when anger can be expressed and ventilated, the pressure cooker doesn’t build up.

Musharraf induces boredom and, when he speaks too much as he often does, a sense of ennui. But apart from the warriors of jihad who have reason to hate him, and who have been serious about doing away with him, he doesn’t induce hatred. He doesn’t induce the anger that Bhutto and Zia inspired among segments of the population. Punjabis certainly don’t seem to have much to complain about. This and not the army’s divisions is his strongest calling card.