To get a measure of the depths to which Nawaz Sharif's position has sunk after two and a half years of his heavy mandate, it is instructive to draw a comparison between where he stands now and where Benazir Bhutto stood at a comparable period during her second prime ministership.

When the Daughter of the East returned to power in 1993 she was in a weak and vulnerable position. In the National Assembly she had a bare majority, that too with the help of the PML-J whose nominee, Manzoor Wattoo, she had to accept as chief minister of Punjab.

In the Frontier the government was formed by a coalition of the PML-N and the ANP. In Sindh, although the PPP was in power, it had to face the hostility of the MQM which soon entered into a de facto alliance with Nawaz Sharif. Balochistan under Nadir Magsi stayed largely neutral.

So aggressive and threatening was the behaviour of PML-N members in the National Assembly and the Punjab assembly that it became difficult to conduct orderly sittings. Outside Parliament Nawaz Sharif launched one anti-government agitation after the other, making numerous strike calls and asking traders not to pay taxes. In Karachi the MQM exerted relentless pressure through a never-ending series of crippling strikes. Indeed, by the summer of 1995 the government's writ did not run in many MQM-dominated areas, with thanas shutting their gates at night and policemen going about in fear of their lives.

This was the low point from which the PPP started its second term. But within two years - that is by about November 1995 - the situation had turned. The atmosphere in the National Assembly was made orderly after two of the rowdiest PML-N MNAs, Rao Qaiser and Birjees Tahir, were beaten up within the precincts of Parliament by PPP jialas; Shaikh Rasheed, another PML-N rowdy, was implicated in a kalashnikov case and sent to Bahawalpur jail where he discovered a new, reflective side to his personality; and Nawaz Khokhar, who as a PML-N MNA used to roll up his sleeves at the smallest provocation, was brought over to the PPP side through intimidation and blackmail.

In the Frontier Aftab Sherpao, who proved himself to be an astute political operator, had turned the tables on the Sabir Shah government through horse-trading and vote-buying. In Karachi General Naseerullah Babar had the MQM on the run when he launched a fierce crackdown on it.

Furthermore, the Sharifs were financially squeezed (a new experience for them since their industrial empire had grown because of easy access to semi-official credit), with public sector banks calling in their extensive loans to them.

This then was the situation at the beginning of 1996. While Nawaz Sharif and his legions were exhibiting growing signs of exhaustion and frustration, Benazir Bhutto, despite the charges of blatant corruption put at her and her husband's door, had come to occupy a commanding position. But then the fates intervened. Where Benazir should have taken things easy, her success and the opposition's discomfiture went to her head and fed her natural arrogance. There was also Asif Zardari who had an increasingly grubby finger in every pie.

So just as everything was going her way, Benazir picked a stupid quarrel with Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah whom in happier times she herself had picked for this post. As this quarrel dragged on (for the better part of 1996) it distracted the government and, perhaps worse, distorted Benazir's thinking. As if this was not enough, Benazir, with no small help from her husband, picked a quarrel with Farooq Leghari, her own man in the presidency. Thus two people who should have been her strategic allies turned into her bitterest enemies.

The irony of this situation has to be savoured. A government which had blunted the offensive of the PML-N, put the Sharifs in their place, conquered Peshawar and subdued Karachi, was now having its energies dissipated by the jostling of four over-sized egos: those of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari, Sajjad Ali Shah and Farooq Leghari. Into this seething cauldron was added another explosive ingredient: the killing of Murtaza Bhutto. At a critical moment this was a major psychological blow to a government which was already the victim of a siege mentality. When Leghari struck the ground had already been pulled from under the PPP's feet.

From this recital two overwhelming conclusions can be drawn. (1)That Benazir from a position of weakness rose to a position of strength. (2) That she and her husband, through sheer hubris and wilfulness, undid this advantage and brought about their own downfall. Nawaz Sharif had little to do with this drama. If Benazir and Farooq Leghari had not fallen out, he (Sharif) would still have been nursing his desperation.

Time now to look at the fortunes of the heavy mandate. The 1997 elections were a one-sided affair for Nawaz Sharif. The PPP was too distracted to put up a proper fight. Moreover, its leadership carried the stigma of widespread corruption on its back. Not to be underestimated was another factor. In opposition Nawaz Sharif had emerged as a popular leader, one who was finally able to cut the umbilical chord which bound him to the spy-masters and army generals who had helped him become a national leader as a countervailing force to Benazir Bhutto.

The PML-N's spectacular triumph was thus almost fore-ordained. It could be seen either as a gift from heaven or as a spinoff from Benazir's follies but hardly as the outcome of any Napoleonic endeavour on the part of Nawaz Sharif.

Even so, Nawaz Sharif's position as prime minister was unassailable: an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly and the Punjab assembly; Muslim League governments in all the provinces, with his own brother strutting imperiously across Punjab; the MQM and ANP his allies; the PPP down and out, its leadership hounded by numerous cases of corruption; the rest of the opposition in a state of disarray.

Further trophies enriched the pantheon of the heavy mandate: in short order the scalps of Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah and President Farooq Leghari and then, amazingly, that of General Jahangir Karamat who had committed the sin of saying out loud, or implying, that decision-making was being done in a cavalier fashion and that its form needed to be improved. No civilian autocrat in Pakistan's history had enjoyed such power before. Truly, the world was Nawaz Sharif's oyster.

This was a year ago. What do we see a year later? Just the reverse of what happened to Benazir (that is, before her self-facilitated downfall). A government plunging from the pinnacle of power to the depths of failure: increasingly embattled, assailed from all sides, trapped in a confusion which grows thicker by the moment, hard-pressed to understand by what avenging furies its glory and triumph have turned so swiftly to ashes and dust.

Two broad explanations account for this phenomenon. First, the working of fate which seems finally to be catching up with the fortune of the Sharifs. They rose to great power and prominence without any real talent for the task of rulership. Now their inadequacies are being exposed. Regarding many of the developments taking place in and around Pakistan they have not the faintest clue. Where the heavy mandate was seen as the fore-runner to miracles which would transform Pakistan, it has become another byword for weary cynicism.

Second, the Kargil debacle. Nothing else could have more brutally turned the spotlight on Nawaz Sharif's failings, on the fact that in the role which fell to him through a mixture of good luck and fortuitous circumstances he has simply been out of his depth, than this crisis and its sorry handling. The emperor without his clothes: the breathless dash to Washington gave the people a glimpse of that.

Whether the heavy mandate lasts out its term or comes to a premature end is now a matter of detail. If current evidence is anything to go by, the people of Pakistan have turned their backs on it once and for all.

But in assessing the present situation one factor should not be lost sight of. Ever since the early years of Pakistan the army has exercised a political role, either overtly or from the wings. For the first time in living memory it is keeping to itself, brooding in silence, its self-confidence and pride badly hurt by the experience of Kargil. Will this mood last or is it a passing phase?