THE people of Pakistan - not ones to be put down by repeated assaults on their intelligence - braced themselves for the start of a grand national awakening after the tumultuous events of October 12. What they have received instead is a lesson in confusion and drift they will long remember.

They were looking for heroes. They have been given a cast of characters, from those in the national security council and the federal cabinet down to the provincial governments, about as exciting as a collection of sleeping pills.

Forgetting past experience and putting their badly-bruised faith in the vows of their latest saviours, they expected a dramatic form of house-cleaning that would make the future safe for effective and sustainable democracy. They have been rewarded with the legal nightmare of General Amjad's attritional accountability.

They expected the Mians and the Zardaris to be knocked out of the political arena. They are seeing instead that the leaden-footed march of the new regime is helping keep these discredited figures politically alive.

Pity the English-speaking middle classes who saw hope in the two puppies that General Musharraf held in his arms for the benefit of foreign photographers. They are learning the hard way that vision and a broad mental horizon entail more than puppies and well-cut suits.

The people of Pakistan expected a new beginning. Consider the deepening well-springs of their disenchantment when the tap-water (and not the old wine) being served to them comes in ancient bottles.

The people of Pakistan were not expecting miracles. Let us be clear on this point. They just wanted the assurance that the country finally was set on the right path. Imagine their sense of dismay as they watch the Chief Executive and his colleagues dissipate their energies on inconsequential things while leaving larger issues untouched.

It is easy, and tempting, to exaggerate Pakistan's misfortunes. But this is no exaggerating matter. If there were an instrument to check the national pulse all it would show would be dejection and despair. If in six months this is where the country has been brought, where will it be in a year and a half when General Naqvi finishes, or so at least he assures us, with his district devolution plan?

Fierce partisans apart, there is no longer any fervid popular interest in the fate of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto or the future prospects of Begum Kalsoom Nawaz or Punjab's little Hitler, Mian Shahbaz Sharif. But there is also no great appetite for seeing the army make, for the fourth time in historical succession, a hash of things.

The national predicament is indeed baffling. In war college what are budding Montgomerys and Rommels taught? I suppose one of the lessons for higher commanders would be to concentrate on the larger picture. General Musharraf's reforming government has been doing just the opposite: instead of concentrating on strategy (the larger picture) it has been chasing every rabbit that runs across its path. For every problem, from canal-cleaning to economy documentation, the Generalissimo's answer is simple: send in the troops.

Nothing is achieved because half the time officers and men do not even understand the problems they are asked to solve. But the army, as the source of power, attracts the blame reserved earlier for the mandarin and the politician.

Not having an eye for the larger picture also means that there is no sense of priorities. The primary and the secondary, the important and the unimportant, get mixed together. This can have fatal consequences for a country with limited resources and an infinity of problems.

Having seized power in 1917, Lenin was faced with a stark choice: prosecute the war against Germany (Russia being a part of the anti-German alliance) or consolidate the Bolshevik Revolution. Over the objections of his colleagues, Lenin opted for peace even though it came in a humiliating package. But Lenin was clear in his mind. Safeguarding the revolution was more important than riding the horse of misplaced nationalism.

Mao did much the same thing during the Long March. He traded territory for survival. The Red Army escaped encirclement in order to fight another day.

What are our priorities? Setting our house in order or emulating the feats of Genghis Khan? We have to make up our minds because we cannot have it both ways. Courting regional isolation because of our identification with the Taliban and encouraging a strange mix of extremist factions to keep alive the fires of insurrection in occupied Kashmir are aims at odds with the task of national reconstruction. This scarcely means Kashmir be abandoned. Only this that the Kashmiris themselves should lead their fight for independence.

As for our nuclear capability, it fits in with nothing. It does not enhance our security and only gives us a false sense of self-importance.

All the same, if the army was the natural party of government our quest for political stability would come to an end. The army could set up a General Political Department and political parties could be required to register with it. The more eligible politicians could then jockey for position under the army's umbrella.

But if Pakistan's history makes anything clear it is that although politicians can ignore the army's point of view only at their peril, the army cannot lead politics from the front. Influencing events from the sidelines is a different thing altogether. Accordingly, despite illusions to the contrary, the army is not the natural party of government.

But what is to be done when politicians left to their own devices also turn out to be unqualified disasters?. It is not only Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto who are to blame. Without delving too much into the past, suffice it to say that anyone in a position of power in the last 20 years has contributed to the national mess: Ishaq Khan, General Aslam Beg, the late General Asif Nawaz, Farooq Leghari, Justice Sajjad Ali Shah. Power went to the heads of all of them. Besides, to a man, they were bereft of anything approaching vision. It is thus not the failure of individuals which is the issue but the bankruptcy, intellectual and moral, of an entire class.

What then should a new beginning (that people were expecting after October 12) have consisted of? Nothing more radical than a quick round of house-cleaning - swift, visible and, if such was the need, arbitrary - followed by a quick restoration of a hopefully chastened democracy. One caveat, however. The completion of this agenda would have required, for a brief period, a military-political partnership in order to take Pakistan out of the woods.

There is of course no shortage of democratic purists who will scoff at the notion of any such partnership. Such people will never stick out their necks for anything but to hear them talk in the safety of their homes or through the anonymity of the internet (the internet having spawned more heroes than any recent invention) is to marvel at their bravery. In politics, however, what is workable is more relevant than the ideal.

Even so, how can a military-political partnership come about? Its first condition is a sense of urgency that Pakistan is at a cross-roads and cannot afford a wrong turning. Its second condition is a measure of wisdom and understanding. These conditions have to be met before we can think of scaling the mountains.

But where is the sense of urgency? The Chief Executive should be at his desk trying to work out the causes of things. Instead, like all Pakistani saviours, he is acquiring a taste for foreign travel. And where is the sense of any wisdom? Where the army should be concentrating on a few select problems, it is spreading itself thin. Where it should be working on a restricted schedule it has set out on a road with no clear end in sight.

Six months ago there was a sense of hope in the country. Far from being mourned, Nawaz Sharif's departure was greeted with a sigh of relief. Everything seemed possible in that hour. That euphoria has vanished. The corrosive cynicism which is the hallmark of the Pakistani middle class has risen to the surface once again.

Can a rescue operation be mounted? Can some of that hope be rekindled? Can the strands of a military-political partnership be put together? The signs are not promising. While the challenges facing Pakistan are great, the national response to them is pathetic. Adding to the pervading gloom is the thought that the golden moment of opportunity which General Musharraf had is lost forever.