ACCORDING to one old proverb, "Children and fools speak the truth"; according to another, "Children and fools have merry lives."

The children in the 'Peanuts' comic strip do both, but they are also subject to melancholy, disappointment and despair. In short, they reflect the human condition with its wide emotional spectrum. Day after day, these cartoon characters entertained and instructed millions of readers as the syndicated strip was published in 2,600 newspapers around the world. The recent retirement of Charles Schultz, the creator of 'Peanuts' fifty years after he launched his lovable characters, will leave a big gap.

Charlie Brown, the hapless Everyman, is constantly at the receiving end of stinging barbs and snubs from the acid-tongued Lucy. In one memorable series, she balances an (American) football on the ground and invites Charlie Brown to kick it, only to pull it away at the last moment. Time after time, Charlie Brown charges up to the ball, only to be deceived and land hard on his backside. Linus, Charlie Brown's friend, asks him why he falls for the same trick every time. "Well", replies the victim. "I keep hoping that one day Lucy will keep her word."

Like Charlie Brown, the Pakistani nation keeps hoping that the army will keep its word and like the cartoon character, we keep falling on our collective backside. The messiah of the day repeats the same mantra his illustrious predecessors intoned earlier, and we duly applaud yet another unconstitutional intervention. It is only when the nation's rear end comes into contact with reality that we realize we have been tricked yet again. To be fair, the generals do not mean to fool us: they are as convinced as the rest of us that they can deliver. But as time goes on and things remain the same or get worse, the 'junta du jour' hangs in there, fooling itself that it is doing a better job than 'those damned civvies'.

Take the latest round of Pakistan's recurring bouts of military intervention: three months after he stepped in, all General Pervez Musharraf has to show for his efforts is a few businessmen and politicians in jail, eight billion rupees in returned loans and some new faces in power. All this is an improvement over the last government, but the price we have paid for cosmetic changes is far too high. There have been no radical changes, no departure from the trodden path. But expecting drastic reform from a basically conservative institution shows our Charlie Brown-like naivete.

The whole business of having a general in charge while maintaining a democratic facade is beyond me: the only possible justification for military rule is that freed from constitutional restraints, the administration can take drastic steps and cut through red tape. As it is, we have the worst of both worlds: on the one hand, we have lost the basic right to choose our government, while on the other, we do not have the benefits of quick decision-making the army is supposed to display.

A few examples will prove my point. Well over a month ago, the Chief Executive had proclaimed that the vexing question of independent power projects pricing would be resolved in 30 days. That deadline has come and gone without any solution in sight. Meanwhile, the verdict declaring interest to be un-Islamic has made any future foreign investments in Pakistan almost unthinkable.

One of the most appealing elements in General Musharraf's first address to the nation three months ago was his clear rejection of religious extremism of any kind. The Charlie Browns among us had hoped for some kind of firm action against the gangs of armed zealots that have increasingly infested Pakistan since General Zia's days. But far from calling them to heel, this government seems to have given them greater licence than ever before. In the aftermath of the Indian Airline hijacking last month, we have one of the released prisoners, Maulana Masood Azhar, going around threatening India and the United States with fire and brimstone without the government lifting a finger.

As it is, Pakistan has long stood accused of harbouring terrorists in our midst. After the hijacking, we had been thrown on the defensive by the barrage of accusations from New Delhi, but instead of acting circumspectly, we have added fuel to the fire by allowing Pakistani citizens to act in a flagrantly provocative manner. So much for the Chief Executive's liberal credentials.

And although this government's spokesmen have stressed its commitment to fundamental rights, people like Mushahid Husain and members of Nawaz Sharif's family continue to be detained without charges. Surely three months should be enough to determine whether there are grounds to prosecute or not. Just because Nawaz Sharif and his bunch of thugs treated opponents in this manner does not mean that those now in custody should be denied their legal rights. Two wrongs never made a right.

What is lacking is a clear sense of direction and purpose. Despite the calibre of some of the new team, we have received no signal of what the junta proposes to do with its unlimited powers. Basically, this government is doing what all its predecessors have done: muddling along. By refusing to take the tough steps, it is forgoing the possibilities that had briefly opened up three months ago when there was universal euphoria at Nawaz Sharif's overthrow.

We need to be clear that Pakistan's very survival now depends on reasserting the writ of the state; this in turn demands that the politics of violence should cease. To achieve this goal, the preachers of the gospel of hate and violence have to be strongly discouraged, and ethnic and sectarian armies disarmed. Given the organization and the sophisticated arms they now possess, only the army is capable of carrying out this task. So instead of recovering defaulted loans and outstanding electricity bills, if our armed forces were to concentrate on the more difficult but essential task of restoring law and order, they would be making a genuine contribution towards bringing peace and prosperity to Pakistan.

But if they choose to fritter away the goodwill they still enjoy by carrying on with business as usual, it will not be long before people start asking them why they entered the fray in the first place. After all, even Charlie Brown will get wise one day to the fact that Lucy will never keep her word.