When earnest-sounding men put their hands to the wheel, it is hard to tell which is the more deadly: good intentions or the naivete flowing from an excess of innocence. There is no escaping the Musharraf government's good intentions of which we are reminded every day, not least by a swelling chorus of admirers who are not afraid to say that General Musharraf is the best thing to have happened to Pakistan since (you've probably guessed it) Jinnah. The nation is being told that leaving the sordid past behind, the military is blazing the way to a brave new future.

In pursuit of this objective, the sarcophagus of the country's constitution is being hauled from the depths and re-hammered, to turn it into something of which no one now has a clear idea, not even the demolition experts with the largest hammers.

It might be supposed that if one lesson flows from Pakistan's past it is this: leave the Constitution alone. Not because as a document it is sacred or exceptionally luminous but because, disagreeing about so much else, the 1973 Constitution is the one thing about which most of us agree. Why play with the one strand of unity in a sea of flux and uncertainty? But then we are talking of an institution whose sense of being always in the right is matched by its ability to forget the past at every turning on the road.

In trashing the last decade we forget that the Zia model of governance which took shape after the lifting of martial law in December 1985, had its good points and its bad ones. If the dyarchy it created with its distribution of powers between president and prime minister was wrong in theory, it was perhaps necessary in practice, as a reflection of Pakistan's retarded polity. The essence of that system was parliamentary democracy with a monitoring mechanism in the office of the president.

While the fashion now is to denounce that model, it is worth remembering that for all its faults, and there were many, it gave Pakistan a functioning two-party system, five general elections and as many local elections. It used to be an article of faith with the country's political class that for a stable democracy to grow two things were needed: a two-party system and frequent elections. Well, the 1985 model gave us these two perquisites. But what went wrong?

Simply put, it was unfortunate in the choice of monitors. More than the two revolving prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the real villains of Pakistan's lost decade of the nineties were its two presidents, Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Farooq Ahmed Leghari, who by misusing their powers damaged the system beyond recall.

Not that Bhutto and Sharif were angels. Besides turning the minting of money into full-time occupations, they were also spectacularly incompetent. Neither, however, suffered on account of their sins. Had that been the case it would have been a matter for national rejoicing. On the contrary, on the three occasions when the presidential axe was wielded - twice by Ishaq and once by Leghari - the reasons that came into play had nothing to do with policy and everything with petty spite and a sense of personal injuries.

If Bhutto was corrupt in her first term, and she was, it should have been left to the electorate to sort her out. There was no call for Ishaq, with General Beg's backing, to dismiss her. Ishaq gave Sindh Jam Sadiq Ali. He gave Pakistan Nawaz Sharif. He turned a blind eye to the colourful activities of his son-in-law, Irfan Marwat, who had a developed taste in PIA airhostesses. What moral authority did he have to move against Bhutto?

What moral standing did he have to dismiss Nawaz Sharif in 1993? He was a small-minded man moved by petty jealousies. He made a good bureaucrat but a lousy president. Egging him on was a cabal of advisers, each of whom imagined himself to be following in the footsteps of Richelieu. At the bar of Pakistani history all of them have much to answer for.

But more was to come. In the 1993 elections Benazir Bhutto rode to victory once again. Corruption-wise she remained true to her stars, as did her husband. But she had become a more skilful politician.

She defused the challenge of Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League, which had launched an agitation against her, and put an end to the MQM's reign of terror in Karachi by crushing its militant cadres. At a time when fresh myths are being woven about the army's ability to take tough decisions, it is salutary to remember that where the army failed in Karachi a civilian government succeeded.

By early 1996 Bhutto was mistress of all she surveyed. Or so at least it appeared. But the calm was deceptive, for behind it lurked threatening dangers. For one, Bhutto entered into a needless quarrel with the obstreperous Chief Justice, Sajjad Ali Shah, whom she herself had chosen for the post. For another, there was budding trouble from the man she had chosen as president, Farooq Leghari.

After Ishaq's downfall, several names were mooted for the presidency, including that of the veteran politician, Balkh Sher Mazari, an easy-going man who would have been ideal for the job. Benazir thought so too but at the last minute plumped for Leghari. Why? Who helped her change her mind? People in the know point a finger at the then army chief, Jahangir Karamat. He spoke up for Leghari. In any case, the buck stopped with Benazir for she had to live with the decision.

With Leghari as president, and cordial relations with Karamat, Benazir thought her flanks were covered. But then new problems arose. As Leghari began sprouting wings, friction on small matters grew between him and Zardari, the power behind the throne. Zardari thought that where Leghari should be grateful, he was chafing at the bit. Leghari felt he was not being shown the deference which was now his due (although insiders deny this and say Benazir consulted him on all matters). The crisis with the Supreme Court was also brewing in the wings. Then came Murtaza Bhutto's killing which shook the government.

By this time Leghari's sense of grievance against his former leader had sharpened to the point where he wanted her head. When he conveyed this to General Karamat, the army chief, instead of restraining him, as he could have, said that the army would do its duty - meaning it would back the president. In the long list of Karamat's failures, this perhaps ranks as the gravest for his acquiescence in Leghari's dubious designs helped pave the way for Nawaz Sharif's return to power three months later.

One of the first things Sharif did was to clip the president's wings and take away the powers which had been the mainstay of the 1985 model. A year later when differences cropped up between him and the army chief, it was Karamat who was shown the door. Was there poetic justice in both the reversals?

What is the point of this recitation? Firstly, that no single individual or institution is to blame for the shenanigans of the nineties. Presidents and army chiefs were as much at fault as prime ministers. Secondly, that if between presidential monitors and army chiefs the political process had not been disrupted in the two crucial years of 1990 and 1996, there might have remained an outside chance for Pakistan's political system to find its bearings. With the disruptions the system was doomed.

But for the dismissal of 1996, there would have been no landslide victory for Sharif, no heavy mandate, no delusions of grandeur and no attempt at taming the army by trying to install a rank favourite as its chief. In other words, but for Leghari's action three years earlier, the stage would not have been set for the events of October 12, 1999. Thus do events wait and feed upon each other, the future foreshadowed by the happenings of the past.

Now the seeds of another experiment are being scattered, the aim being to reinvent democracy and make another military ruler immortal. Seeds or the teeth of the dragon? We'll have to wait and see.

Stupid error: Last week I accused PTV of saying "Begum Sahiba Musharraf" when all it had said was Begum Sehba Musharraf. My ears deceived me. Very sorry.