WHEN I started in journalism (oh, with so much diffidence) twenty years ago, my hair was black, my face unlined and my mind full of foolish notions. Those being the Zia years, it is a measure of my youthful enthusiasm that I put faith in Ms Bhutto's rising star, believing her to be the answer to the nation's dreams.

As youth, alas, is not immortal,the years have taken their toll. My hair is grey and on my face are the wrinkles of age. I am not a wiser man for these changes and my insight into the nature of things is no clearer. But about certain things I am more relaxed. As a journalist, for instance, I am less inclined to strike dramatic poses or adopt positions of extreme cynicism and despair, a temptation to which youthful minds easily succumb.

I hope I do not sound like a pontiff when I say that Pakistan is no better or worse than other countries. While not the promised land, or God's gift to humanity, it is also not, as some of its denizens too readily assume, specially marked out for reverses and failure. In other words, it is not a land immune to the laws of common sense. For folly it will pay the price, as it has done in the past. But given some competence and the right national direction, there is no reason for it to stumble in the dark.

Twenty years of political hackwork have left some other impressions on my mind. Not for the sake of effect but as an inescapable corollary of our recent history do I say that on its own the army is no solution to anything. The army high command has not distinguished itself in the conduct of war, its true business. In neither of the two major wars fought in the last 53 years did it show strategic flair or intellectual competence. This should be a sobering thought. Mediocre or indifferently competent at its own profession, can it shine in another for which it is equipped neither by training nor by temperament?

But it is equally true that the political class has made a hash of things. Take the recent past. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had their chances and blew them. Sharif's political notions were of the most primitive kind. An intellectually limited person, he was only capable of the mess he made. But what about Benazir? She blames the intelligence agencies for her troubles. Doubtless she faced intrigues on that front but was it ISI and MI which took her hands and dipped them in Marcos-scale corruption?

The truth is mediocrity rules the roost: as much in the military caste and the political class as in the mandrinate and, I daresay, the press. As for the present order, Musharraf and his generals are nice guys with the right instincts, no doubt about it. The national climate today is more relaxed than at any time since 1958. But what does the other side of the picture show? Drift, an unsophisticated view of politics and a muddled sense of priorities.

So what is to be done? Hold elections and transfer power to another National Assembly of political incompetents? Few musical scores are as intoxicating as the rhetoric of democracy. But democracy of the kind we have had is a recipe for disaster. If the generals are not equipped to run the political show by themselves, neither are the politicians. A resurrected or remade Muslim League calling the shots? The PPP once again on trial? The mere prospect is frightening.

Ours is a tolerant society, with a known capacity for suffering, but it cannot afford Benazir or Nawaz again. Even with masochists there is an acceptable threshold of pain. Just so much and no more. Vis-a-vis these two wonders we are in this position. If this does not square with the requirements of pure democracy, so be it. The corps commanders are right on this score: no political future for Pakistan's most famous duo.

As for the beguiling theory that to solve the problems of democracy we need more democracy, we can do without it. Lower the floodgates of democracy and all we will get are substitute versions of the original Benazir and Nawaz models. No, if it be laid down as the first commandment that Pakistan's generals should not occupy the bull-ring by themselves, the second is that Pakistan's politicians should not be allowed to run loose on their own. As each is a menace more threatening than the other, both together must forge a pragmatic partnership.

Armchair revolutionaries and democratic purists, of which Pakistan has more than its share, need not be alarmed. A civil-military partnership need not assume a structural form. The repeated insistence on the hybrid animal called a national security council only reveals the poverty of the military mind. If there is such a council and generals, air marshals and admirals sit on it they will simply suffocate democracy and not allow it to function. We will be back to square one.

A civil-military partnership has to be like the British constitution, unwritten but faithfully followed. Parliament and prime minister must learn to tread softly. The space for democracy must be extended slowly and gradually, less through the letter of the constitution than through ability and performance. What, after all, is the constitution? On its own it is helpless before the rifles of 111 Brigade.

To be sure, defiance is a great thing. But what is the reality? Pakistani politicians out of power are either windbags or sycophants - preaching verbal revolution, which harms no one, or cringing before authority. In power they behave like professional wrestlers. There must be a tempering of these two extremes.

How then to safeguard the army's concerns? By embodying them not in any mythic unicorn and calling it the national security council but in the person of the president who should not be the neuter that he is at present but at the same time not so powerful that he makes a hobby of dismissing governments. The Eighth Amendment president brought grief to Pakistan. We should be taking a closer look at the French model wherein the prime minister runs domestic policy while the president looks after foreign policy and national security.

As for the proposal aired in some quarters that while the president should not be able to axe the National Assembly (as the Eighth Amendment president was able to do) but only prime minister and cabinet, this will take us back to the Ghulam Muhammad and Iskander Mirza eras when at presidential bidding a succession of prime ministers hurtled through a revolving door.

Of Ayaz, the great Sultan Mahmud's favourite slave, it is said that when he had risen in royal favour he would oft go to a secret chamber, there put on the rags he wore as a slave and standing before the mirror say to himself, "Ayaz, qadr-i-khud beshanas". Which is to say, don't forget thyself. For long Pakistan's strutting heroes have attempted to walk in Mahmud's footsteps, with not an iota of his ability. For a change they might remember the example of his slave.