A peculiar problem has always haunted Pakistan's redeemers. They have not been content simply to seize power. That after all is the easier part, a few truckloads of soldiers from the famous 111 Brigade in Westridge, Rawalpindi, doing the trick.

Gnawed by a sense of insecurity, and recognizing that their power rests on nothing more permanent than the fixed bayonets of the army, sooner or later they begin experiencing a deep hunger for 'legitimacy'. On power acquired in the darkness of the night, they seek to put the seal of legal and constitutional approval. This is where their troubles start.

Legitimacy comes from two sources: constitutional sanction or revolutionary performance. Since revolutionary performance is not relevant to Pakistan's circumstances, all that remains is the first of these considerations.

Time and again Pakistan's highest court has gone to great lengths to justify military coups but Pakistani patriarchs have not been satisfied. They have always sought to reinforce judicial sanction with popular approval, which is more hard to come by. A straightforward election would appear to be the answer to this problem but redeemers seldom entrust their fate to the hazards of chance. So perforce they resort to other stratagems to legitimize their rule and stay in power.

There is one problem with this approach. Although the people may be powerless, they have a keen eye for the ridiculous. Like cattle they can be driven but it is more difficult to fool them. Moreover, if the stratagem employed be too transparent a piece of trickery, in the silent watches of the night even the redeemer may not be above feeling, however momentarily, a touch of shame.

Hence the paradox which has always dogged the quest for legitimacy in Pakistan. Based on sham devices, far from conferring strength or greater moral authority, this quest only makes a strongman look more vulnerable. Did Ayub Khan's Basic Democracies system, tailor-made to suit his needs, strengthen him? Did his sham victory over Fatima Jinnah in the 1965 presidential election enhance his moral stature? Did General Zia ul Haq's famous referendum add lustre to his name?

General Musharraf finds himself at the same crossroads. True, on one or two occasions recently he has invoked Quranic help for his rule, saying in effect that his being at the helm was a manifestation of the Divine Will. Mercifully this argument hasn't been carried any further. From the spiritual plane the military government has returned to the terrestrial: how to cover autocratic rule with the mantle of legitimacy, the enduring problem that has confounded all of Pakistan's saviours.

We should not be misled by appearances. This is not a battle for protecting any reforms. Indeed, even on a generous reckoning, the military government has few achievements to boast of, its record lacklustre and indifferent in most departments of national life. This is a battle whose simple aim is to ensure that whatever else happens, the redeemer remains unchallenged as ringmaster of Pakistan's hapless political circus.

The price of such ambition comes in the form of keeping dubious company. Just as for heists you need safe breakers, and for scams con artists, for the constitutional games now underway in Pakistan the supreme requirement is for sharp lawyers and flexible politicians.

Pakistan's redeemers have never lacked expert legal advice. The best lawyers, the sharpest judicial minds, have gravitated to their cause. Why? I cannot say. Why, for that matter, are the best legal minds often the most unprincipled? Again a hard one to answer. Perhaps hair-splitting, on which the legal calling rests, becomes second nature to them. Or perhaps it is professional training which bids them serve whoever can pay for their supper. Whatever the reason, the legal community (judges included) has much to answer for. To say that this community has invariably upheld justice and the rule of law is as great a fiction as to say that journalists have always upheld the truth.

It is open season for flexible politicians too. Note the gyrations of the timeservers and turncoats gathered under the banner of the Mian Azhar and Chaudry Shujaat-led League. If they are keen to be useful to Gen Musharraf, they are not to be blamed for they are following a tradition as old as Pakistan. No strongman, civilian or military, has ever had a problem finding political recruits--not Ghulam Muhammad and Iskander Mirza, nor Ayub Khan and Zia ul Haq. For his part Gen Musharraf, driven to win political support, is wooing the very political class he had earlier derided.

We have thus come full circle: from the earlier contempt for politicians to the softer line now being peddled. Such are the wages of necessity. But where is the national interest in all this? What are the reforms whose protection Gen Musharraf keeps citing as the overwhelming reason why he should stay in power?

The three outstanding gifts of this government have been inflation, joblessness and a client relationship with the United States. Do these achievements constitute a strong enough reason to mangle the Constitution and embark upon another dubious political experiment?

The military government may flatter itself that it has God on its side as well as the 'silent majority'. If this is so, what is it afraid of? With such powerful allies, why doesn't Gen Musharraf wait for the national elections scheduled for later this year and then, if he is so keen to protect his 'reforms', present himself for election according to the procedure laid down in the Constitution? What need to look for short-cuts and other dubious measures?

It is not as if the Pakistani people constitute a nation of heroes. As they have demonstrated over and over again, they are quite capable of submitting quietly to the worst kinds of misrule. Submission to the inevitable or the inescapable is one of their leading characteristics. But suffering something is one thing. Actively endorsing the same thing, which is what Gen Musharraf would expect them to do, is altogether different.

They never took kindly to Ayub Khan's autocracy. Nor did they gladly swallow Gen Zia's religion-coated pills. If their history is any guide, they will not take kindly to any forced attempt to endorse Gen Musharraf's benign rule. Injury they have always endured. But insult added to injury, which is what referendums and other cooked-up devices amount to, is to pour salt over their wounds. One of the major tests of leadership is to know how far to go.

Gen Musharraf's strategists, therefore, need to be careful. Above all, they have to guard against ridicule, the precursor of destruction. General Zia never wholly recovered from the derision excited by his 1984 referendum. When Bhutto and all his chief ministers got themselves elected unopposed in the 1977 elections, the credibility of those elections lay destroyed. In Ayub Khan's time the Convention League, the then King's Party, was an object of popular fun just as the Like-minded League led by Mian Azhar and Ch. Shujaat is today.

Redeemers are often tempted to take short-cuts. But as that old adage goes, the longest distance between two points is an unfamiliar short-cut. The safest route often turns out to be the one most fraught with risk.

We've always had strongmen invoking the national interest and God knows what else to stay in power. They end up exhausting popular patience and departing from the scene of their triumphs in a cloud of ignominy. If only someone were to break this cycle, if only someone were to depart when his time was up. Such is the sentimentalism of the Pakistani people that such a person they will turn into a living hero.

But the people of Pakistan are doomed to be disappointed for their redeemers are built of sterner stuff. Leaving nothing to chance they try to insure themselves against every possibility. To such extraordinary lengths do they go in this endeavour that they end up destroying the very thing they seek to preserve.