PAKISTAN’S foremost problem almost since its birth has been incompetent leadership. Its people may not be without their share of talent but its leaders, with the exception of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, have been some of the biggest disasters the Third World has produced.

Bhutto was brilliant but his follies were brilliant too, no mediocre capable of digging the pit he did from which emerged that king of all things serpentine, General Ziaul Haq.

But if the requirements of statehood most of our leaders have not understood, in small things they have tended to be over-clever, over-reaching themselves in the process.

Bhutto thought he was being smart in picking Zia as army chief although six generals were senior to him. Zia was so humble, unctuous and eager to please that it seemed the smart thing to choose him. Bhutto was fooled and lived to rue his decision.

The Sharifs thought they were being smart when they picked Musharraf as army chief, assuming that a man without a native constituency (forgetting that the MQM too was a constituency) would be easy to handle. Anwar Kidwai of Mehran Bank (now dead) – the bank which funded a rich cast of political characters and also gave money to the ISI to fix the 1990 election – is said to have been the go-between who brought Musharraf and the Sharifs together.

Kidwai has been a permanent ambassador of sorts throughout Musharraf’s stay at the helm. The Sharifs of course must have long ruminated where they went wrong.

That Pakistan hasn’t gone under completely is a tribute to the toughness of its people. Otherwise, any other country with such Napoleons at its head would have invited the fate of Tito’s Yugoslavia or Lenin’s Soviet Union – their parts scattered to the four winds.

This set-up has been lucky. But incompetence and hubris (a fatal combination) have finally caught up with it, the Chief Justice case almost a textbook study in how to create a self-inflicted disaster.

From the televised picture of the Chief Justice sitting before a uniformed Musharraf, to the photo beamed worldwide of the Chief Justice held by the hair by a zealous guardian of the state (the identity of this hero still a mystery), everything seemed geared towards setting off a crisis. Musharraf has one now on his hands and he only has himself, or his close advisers, to blame.

He is not the man he was or was supposed to be. The air seems to have gone out of the performance of the characters around him. A few of his ministers continue to speak but not with the old assurance. The majority are strangely silent. Even fetching Sumaira Malik, high priestess of ‘enlightened moderation’ (the reigning mantra of which, sadly, we are not hearing much these days), seems to have slipped into the shadows. (Et tu, Cleopatra?)

Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani has lost some of his panache. Law Minister Wasi Zafar, never one for squeamishness, is learning some manners. What is the world coming to?

The idea of bringing in storm-troopers from Gujrat dressed as lawyers to the Supreme Court on April 3 when the Chief Justice was to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council was an act of pure genius. For when these worthies shouted pro-Musharraf slogans, they were set upon by the crowd and given a sound thrashing. Such are the emotions this affair has engendered.

Gujrat is the power base of Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Ellahi and of his cousin Shujaat Hussain, president of Musharraf’s Q League. Thank you, Chaudhry Sahib, for invariably adding fuel to fire.

In the past, top lawyers took pride in appearing for military or otherwise authoritarian governments. This time, because of the unprecedented unity of the legal community, even those lawyers whose hearts are with the government are afraid to show their true colours. For many of them discretion is proving to be the better part of valour. The legal community is in no mood to stand any nonsense. Lawyers appearing for the government – Wasim Sajjad, Khalid Ranjha, etc – have had to face their wrath.

Even Sharifuddin Pirzada, the legal guru of military regimes past and present, has shied away from the reference against the Chief Justice, his lifelong devotion to military causes balanced by this one act of forbearance. Who knows when the last bugles sound, and the mountains come down to the seas, this one act takes him past the pearly gates.

In the midst of all this creative confusion – creative in the sense that something good may yet come of it – comes word of a vital Musharraf concession to the PPP’s reigning combo, Daughter of the East Benazir Bhutto and Prince of Enlightenment Asif Ali Zardari: the winding up of the department looking into their alleged deeds of money-laundering and corruption.

Their nemesis, Hasan Wasim Afzal, who was heading this department has been put out to pasture in the lush green lawns of the Punjab Governor’s House where he will be secretary to Punjab governor Lt Gen ® Khalid Maqbool, a luminary whose looks suggest that time hangs heavy on his hands.

Wasim can regale the governor with his detective stories. Maqbool can tell him about the highpoint of his career: raising his arms and shouting slogans during Musharraf’s 2002 referendum, an all too sacred affair in which not mortals but angels voted.

Wasim Afzal’s other claim to lasting fame is having his daughter wedded in Lahore’s historic Badshahi Mosque (slight damage to the mosque being a small price to pay for the privilege of having the function there).

Does this concession presage a deal between an embattled Musharraf and a politically born-again Benazir? Astrologers and pundits tend to agree, pointing out that back-channel contacts between the two sides have been going on for some time.

But the pace of the contacts may have picked up as a result of the current crisis. With different options closing for him, Musharraf may be reaching out to the one branch still within his reach.

There would be poetic justice in this deal if it comes through because Musharraf and the PPP deserve each other. It would mean the coming together of two bankruptcies, one old, that of Benazir, who had two terms as prime minister to prove her bankruptcy; the other new, Musharraf’s, who has had seven and a half years to prove his ineptitude.

Benazir was angling for a deal with Musharraf right from the beginning. After all, Musharraf’s enemy and her enemy were one and the same, Nawaz Sharif. But swept by hubris, Musharraf trained his guns equally at Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. He was left with no alternative but to fall back into the fatal embrace of the Chaudries and, with the help of his intelligence agencies, form a new political party, the Q League, a house of cards which is proving no different during the present crisis.

It is not a little ironical that one of Musharraf’s key aides, Tariq Aziz, who was instrumental in bringing the Chaudries close to Musharraf is now involved in the efforts to bring the PPP in from the cold. The PPP was then reviled. Today Musharraf’s external patrons think it vital for shoring up his increasingly threatened position.

If this arrangement works out several things will follow. (1) The PPP will be tarred with the brush of collaborating with an unpopular regime. (2) The Q League will be shaken and the Chaudries, sworn enemies of the PPP, will have to learn to live the difficult art of co-existing with the PPP. (3) A more cohesive anti-Musharraf alliance can be expected to emerge.

A crowded political calendar awaits Pakistan in 2007: presidential election, decision about Musharraf’s uniform, general elections. Before the Chief Justice saga everything seemed within Musharraf’s grasp. Not any more. For this we must thank the legal community whose principled steadfastness has altered a frozen political landscape.