Isn’t it weird that no one knows for sure if, when, and how the general elections will be held in Pakistan?

If Pakistani leaders saw Bush the day after his party received a routing in both the houses of the US Congress, there is grief for them to wallow in. Gone was the snicker, the churlishness and the glory of power that used to light up Bush each time he addressed his nation. Much humbled, much demoralised, much crushed, Bush suddenly looked ashen, vulnerable and pathetic. The American people had risen like a tsunami to drown Bush and his administration. Donald Rumsfeld was kicked out and Dick Cheney skunked away from public view.

What a downfall!

Were one to believe Maureen Dowd, the sulphurous columnist for the New York Times, the old warriors have already moved into the White House to exorcise the “devils” that got George Bush to run the six-year presidency amuck. “Once Sonny (President Bush) managed to heedlessly dynamite the Republican majority — as well as the Middle East, the Atlantic alliance and the US army — then Bush Inc., the family firm that snatched the presidency for W. (George Bush) in 2000, had to step in. Two trusted members of the Bush (Bush Senior 41) war council, Mr Baker and Robert Gates, have been dispatched to discipline the delinquent juvenile and extricate him from the mother of all messes,” writes Dowd.

On a wet November 7, Americans went to their local firehouse or school to vote. Inside the hall, you first signed in a ledger containing your name and address, got a chit, went into the booth and checked on the computer screen the names of your congressmen whom you wanted to return to power. From start to finish, the whole process took just over five minutes. By the next morning we knew the losers and the winners.

Did anyone get shot? Was there rioting at a polling station? Were there incidents of stabbing? Was there any fraud or cases of phony votes being stuffed in ballot boxes? Did the intelligence agencies, the law-enforcing police harass the voters, coercing them to vote for the government in power? Were there teams of foreign observers watching the polling at different places?

You and I know such things don’t happen in America; but all of the above always happen and will happen next year in Pakistan if Musharraf calls for elections. Isn’t it weird that no one knows for sure if, when, and how the general elections will be held? And weirder still is whether Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Altaf Hussain will be there in person or will they still jabber into the phones, long distance on the election day?

Musharraf and his cronies have had good innings thus far. Bush allowed them to bat, ignoring cries of ‘Howzat’ shouted by the opposition parties in Pakistan. But the man who could allow Rumsfeld to fall by the wayside after the congressional elections can yet get tough with General Musharraf should the going get rough for him.

And of course, the Democrats will want to rein in Musharraf. Don’t believe Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri telling us that nothing will change because the “new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and other leaders of Democratic Party during their election campaign had stressed the necessity of faithfully implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. This ensures continuing support to Pakistan.”

Kasuri is delusional when he tries to comfort himself with wishful thinking like: “The former US President Clinton, the best known leader of the Democratic Party, had recently invited President Musharraf to attend the Clinton Global Initiative in New York where he was the only leader from Asia. This is indicative of importance of Pakistan and of President Musharraf in the eyes of leaders of both Republican and Democratic parties.” Pity the man who gets taken in by such rhetoric.

It’s very well for the likes of Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain and his blowhards to tell the Pakistanis that Musharraf will remain the president and the army chief when he wins the elections next year. Should the Democrats decide that Musharraf, with no transparency or accountability for full eight years, has to be checked, things can change overnight.

Senator Joe Biden, who will now become the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN recently, about Musharraf cozying up to the Taliban. “It’s pretty clear to me that Musharraf decided that we weren’t likely to be able to prevail in the way that he hoped we would in Afghanistan. So he started to cut his own deal as a lot of us already predicted he would. And so I think we’re in real trouble there.”

Senator Biden and Representative Tom Lantos of California, who is set to lead the House International Relations Committee, are strongly supporting the India bill, already passed by the House. The agreement calls for the US to provide India with nuclear fuel and is seen as a cornerstone of the emerging alliance between New Delhi and Washington after nearly a half-a-century of Cold War estrangement. Pakistan’s Foreign Office really needs to get cracking with the Democrats instead of issuing feel-good statements by its minister Kasuri.

Musharraf, like Bush, has become an icon of power. The general appears invincible and unstoppable in his drive for power for more years. Apart from appeasing Bush and towing his line, he has done little else to lift his nation out of abject poverty, corruption and negation of human rights. Fudging economic data or human development indices to impress the World Bank or any other international donor is possible; but for how long can such swagger last?

Issues like corruption, sexual perversion and hypocrisy played a major role in the downfall of the Republicans. We don’t need to get into the problems that affected the country. By now, we all know them by heart!