"Unfortunately our media is playing a negative role and presenting the (sic) doomsday scenario."

- General Musharraf addressing an assembly of Pak-American doctors.

Not for the first time has Gen Musharraf blamed the media - really the press - for being the carrier of disinformation and despondency. On this occasion, for good measure presumably, he added that the enemy lies within, not outside.

A charge more serious against the press is hard to make. For what it virtually amounts to is to accuse it of acting as a fifth column busy undermining the country from within. Termites eating the woodwork of an otherwise sound building: this is the dangerous image evoked. Can there be an issue more urgent to probe?

The usual cynics and sceptics apart, Musharraf enjoyed a fairly good press when he seized power. Painted as a reluctant dictator, he was seen as someone forced by events, notably the shenanigans of Nawaz Sharif's 'heavy mandate', to come riding into the political arena. Even the rhetoric coming readily to the lips of all military dictators, that the army had to step in to save the country, was quietly accepted without subjecting this self-serving hype to too rigorous a cross-examination.

That honeymoon period came to an end long ago. Even so, it would be wrong to say that the press has taken up arms against the Musharraf regime. It has only been the mirror to some of the regime's doings and if the reflected image is a summons to anger, the answer scarcely lies in smashing the mirror, or questioning its quality.

It was not the press which invented the Q League. Not the press which pushed Gen Musharraf into first delivering and then baptizing it. Of the Q League's dubious parenthood, the ISI and its chiefs, present and former, would have a better idea. How is the press to blame?

More to the point, it was not the press which invented the referendum or the huge figures testifying to Gen Musharraf's popularity read out with unfazed eyes by the Chief Election Commissioner, Justice Irshad Hasan Khan. The violence done to simple mathematics was so great that even Gen Musharraf was moved to admit that some people may have been guilty of excessive zeal.

Which is a nice way of putting the matter.The importance of the referendum lay less in conferring any spurious legitimacy on Gen Musharraf than in finally opening the eyes of his middle-class and 'liberal' supporters. Cruder souls may have suspected the truth from the start. But it had to take something like the referendum to shake Pakistan's middle classes out of their self-induced trance. Mr Imran Khan's waking up can also be dated to that seminal event.

In the run-up to the elections Gen Musharraf and his team of oligarchs turned their attention to the country's Constitution. Sorely abused over the years, this document went perhaps through its most trying experience then. Musharraf had already declared himself president for five more years following the referendum. But that was not considered enough. The Constitution was further amended to give him more powers, thus reducing the prime minister to the position of a parliamentary figurehead.

When enshrined in the Legal Framework Order, these measures provoked an outcry across the country. Or, more accurately, among that section of the educated classes which get worked up about constitutional issues. (Other Pakistanis forsook the habit of losing sleep over abstractions some time ago.) Did the press manufacture that outcry? Did it invent steam where none existed?

In the pre-election phase every rule in the book was bent (or broken) to give the advantage to the Q League. In defence of this motley assembly of fair-weather birds, it has been said that if it had official patronage why did it not win an outright majority. The answer is simple. Bereft of official patronage, it would have faced the prospect of political extinction.

After the polls came the comic opera of government formation at the centre and in the provinces. The nation watched these games through jaded eyes. Why jaded? Because starting from the Q League and the referendum down to the October elections, the Pakistani public was exposed to so much that it lost the capacity of amazement. Nothing could surprise it any more. Not Jamali's elevation or the apotheosis of Shujaat Hussain and his cousin Pervez Elahi. Not the new Sindh chief minister or the repainting of the MQM in patriotic colours.

Now what is the press to do in these circumstances? By what magic formula can it spread good cheer amongst a populace dazed into listlessness by a surfeit of comic experiments? How is Gen Musharraf to be convinced that the fault lies less in the mirror than what it reflects?

Forget the press for a moment. How is an ordinary Pakistani to react when every now and then he is reminded forcefully of Pakistan's partial loss of sovereignty to its US ally? How is he to react when the FBI is involved in the picking up of Pakistani citizens? Photographs have appeared in the papers of Dr Ahmed Javed Khawaja, 70, and his brother Ahmad Naveed Khawaja, 60, being brought to an anti-terrorism court in Lahore on the charge of having links with Al Qaeda. They wore no warm clothing and in the cold of December wore open slippers. Even callous hearts would be moved to tears.

In the Manawan area of Lahore where these brothers live - and from where in dramatic fashion they and their family members were picked up - they have a reputation for philanthropy and for treating patients every day free of charge. How to dress up the news of their arrest and subsequent court appearance in such a fashion that instead of spreading despondency amongst Pakistanis of all hues, it brings a smile to their lips?

Bob Woodward in his latest book 'Bush at War' has some details of how quickly, indeed with what alacrity, Gen Musharraf agreed to every last American demand put to him by Colin Powell during that now famous telephone conversation between the two leaders. When a triumphant Powell informed Bush and his cabinet colleagues about this, everyone was amazed. No one had expected so swift or complete a capitulation. How to relate this episode in a manner calculated to spread cheer amongst Pakistanis?

Musharraf is being unfair. He should be happy enough with the despondency of his countrymen and their incapacity to express any anger. He is overplaying his hand and perhaps tempting the gods by demanding that even if reduced to despair, they should yet retain enough aplomb to applaud their plight.

Yes, we have something to cheer about: the surge in foreign exchange reserves. But consider also the fact that at the same time as these reserves have risen millions of Pakistanis have dipped below the poverty line. Statistical prosperity, visible poverty: how to resolve this paradox?

In what way has life become better for most Pakistanis over the last three years? Forget about goods and services, or even jobs. After three years of military rule, does the administration work better? Do the courts work better? Is the criminal justice system more efficient and less corrupt? Are our schools delivering better education? Our hospitals better health? Wapda cheaper electricity? And if this be dubbed carping criticism or the subversive spreading of despondency, can anyone say what other frame of reference to use to measure the wages of military rule?

But leaving the past aside, how many hopeful Pakistanis would there be who would expect anything, leave alone miracles, from what now must be called the Musharraf/Jamali dispensation? How many brave souls across the land ready to wager that after five years Pakistan will have found its lost direction or the shores of a stable polity?

If the answer is none or very few, and if all that most Pakistanis have to look forward to is more of the same, how do we go about resolving the problem of replacing despondency with enthusiasm?