THERE is only so much fiction a nation can swallow and, as even the gods would testify, the people of Pakistan have had their fill. The clumsy move against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry therefore comes as a blessing in disguise for it has directly led to the mess in which the present dispensation finds itself.

Otherwise the nation would have remained trapped in the status quo which only now, for the first time in seven and a half years, shows signs of changing into something else. Let us be grateful for small mercies. For if tinpot heroes were not such clumsy riders, a nation would never be rid of them.

There is no shortage of optimists, however, who say that a good general knows when to retreat. A ‘good’ general does, an inept one doesn’t. Call the masterminds of Kargil good generals? Call the architects of Wana (another piece of brilliance the army could have done without) good generals?

Of all the operations of war retreat is the most difficult, calling for more skill than defence or attack. Expect the present dispensation to conduct an orderly retreat out of this mess? Miracles can still happen, but considering the odds they have managed to stack against themselves, looks increasingly a forlorn hope.

Glibness and bluster have served this dispensation well for seven and a half years. Alas, what it now faces, a crisis born of dimwittedness and arrogance, goes far beyond the exercise of glibness. Pakistan was a different place on March 8. In the next 24 hours it had utterly changed. Judging by what has happened thus far, a long summer of discontent looms ahead.

To recap a few points now widely accepted. The materials for an outbreak of pent-up feelings were all there. All that was needed was a spark and it came in the form of one man’s courage. If during the 4-5 hours he was confined in General Musharraf’s lair in Rawalpindi, Chief Justice Chaudhry had bowed to pressure and resigned, as he was being asked to do, he would have become history.

But he stood his ground and said no, by this one gesture capturing the imagination of the Pakistani people. Of course he has his faults. Which mortal doesn’t? But that particular moment called for fortitude and he was able to provide it.

When you are called upon to man a bridge it’s your courage which counts, not what you may have been or what your psychological profile is. Chief Justice Munir was one of the most brilliant judges to preside over the Supreme Court. But he was also the father of the “doctrine of necessity”, the ill-tuned logic which has served to give a dubious legitimacy to all Pakistani dictatorships. So what are we to do with his brilliance?

Chief Justice Chaudhry has struck a popular chord. That is why lawyers have come out so fervently in his support and why public opinion is with him. Indeed, not so much for his person as for what his defiance has come to symbolise: the independence of the judiciary, the rule of law, the necessity of respecting the Constitution, the responsibility of standing up to the nonsense of one-man rule.

We are an emotional people, easily swayed by the striking gesture or the striking image. A bar association somewhere (is it Toba or some other place?) has offered to buy and put on display Chief Justice Chaudhry’s torn coat and broken spectacles – resulting from his roughing up at the hands of the Islamabad police on March 13 when he walked out of his official residence to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council.

We used to wonder whether in this over-populated country there was someone who could be an honest caretaker steward and be counted upon to conduct free and fair elections. The answer now seems pretty obvious: Justice Chaudhry. Given the current national mood, the people of Pakistan are unlikely to accept anyone else.

Indeed, I am almost ready to bet that the time may not be far off when people will start saying make him the next president of Pakistan. If you ask me, for all his faults, he would be a vast improvement on the other paladins to have occupied, and diminished, this office over the years.

Providence moves in strange ways. Seven and a half years is long enough. If they were meant as punishment for our sins, at least we have the satisfaction of knowing that we have paid for them in full. Our penance having been comprehensive, the heavens now should allow us to move on.

Reading the entrails of the future is always difficult but some things have already changed. The Generalissimo, much as he may cherish the desire, now seems to be in no position to go before the present assemblies and from their safe bosom seek another five-year term. Such a farce lay within the realm of possibility before March 9. Not after what happened that day. This is one dream or illusion which can be safely buried.

No next term from these assemblies and little prospect of remaining in uniform after the expiry of his present term as president later this year. No one will stand for it, not the heavens, not the stars, perhaps not even the supreme guardians of the national interest. The guardians can carry someone’s unpopular baggage, someone perceived as a liability, up to a point, not beyond it if it amounts to compromising their collective interests.

That this dispensation now appears stricken is best attested to by the behaviour of the Q League, collectively opting for discretion over valour, its ranks not long ago so voluble and energetic now deathly pale and silent. Where there should have been a full-scale clanging of cutlery we are seeing only three or four spoons in action.

Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Ellahi was given to saying that Musharraf would be elected president-in-uniform over and over again. Something seems to have robbed even him of his eloquence.

It is perhaps the fear of the unknown; what was unthinkable before, or at least unrealistic, now looking plausible: the dim outlines of a post-Musharraf era.

Adding to the flavour of the season is another factor: internal unrest matched for the first time during these seven and a half years by external disquiet. Musharraf’s external mainstay, his American alliance, appears to be under some strain as questions are being asked in Washington, more pointedly than before, about the Pakistani leader’s commitment to the war against the Taliban.

Then this State Department comment that the US expected the Pakistan president to give up the army chief’s post by the end of this year. Talk of trouble coming not in single spies but entire battalions.

People are now looking up to a Hindu judge of the Supreme Court, Rana Bhagwandas, to do the right thing and balance the scales of justice, which is no small irony and says something about our development as a nation.

He was in India where he was said to have been meditating at an ashram near Lukhnow. As the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court, on his return he takes over as the acting Chief Justice, thus presiding over the reference against Chief Justice Chaudhry. He has a reputation for strictness, honesty and judicial integrity.

About Punjab, my birthplace and first love, I say what Sophocles said of his native Ithaca, “Here is earth all earth excelling…” But I suspect that if Rana Bhagwandas had been from Punjab, and of the faith, he might not have been the cynosure of all eyes as he is at present.

Although a judge of the Lahore High Court, Justice Jawad Khawaja, has resigned in protest during the present agitation, for which he should be honoured, generally speaking it is hard to say about Punjabi jurists (I talk of the past) that they have covered themselves with a surfeit of glory.

Through much of its recent history Punjab somehow has excelled at slavish behaviour. But Punjab’s lawyers are in the forefront of the current struggle. So perhaps all is not lost.

Tailpiece: At a time when in the reference filed against him Chief Justice Chaudhry is accused of demanding favours for his son and excessive ‘protocol’ for himself, it may be of interest to note that two close relatives of the top guardian living in Lahore – Shehzad Alam, nephew, 12-E Model Town and Dr Nigar, cousin (khala ki beti), 130 M Extension – move around with police escorts and have a permanent police guard outside their residences. No fear of any reference against them.