MILITARY writing, as taught in the academies, puts great store by precision. In the issuance of military orders there is, ideally, no place for waffle. The address to the nation by General Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday evening was not a military order. But since it was being delivered by a military man the amount of unrelieved tedium in it was regrettable, to say the least. It was a speech which should not have been made.

It had me struggling with drowsiness in the first 15 minutes but since as a journalist (what things must be borne in this trade) I had to see it through to the end, I had to keep my eyes open but not without violence to my body clock. By the end of the General's Phillipic, sleep had fled and for the rest of the night I was left tossing fitfully in bed, dreaming intermittently of the various circles of hell and suitable punishment for bad speech writers.

Unless a ruler is deliberately waging war on his own countrymen, and therefore deliberately keeping them in a state of confusion (a view of conflict to which General Zia was partial), there are two things he must not do: (1)even if he has no respect for the masses, which most rulers do not, he must not appear to insult the intelligence of his countrymen and, (2)unlike the emperor in the fable, he must not show himself before the people without his clothes. Unfortunately for the general, on this occasion he was guilty on both counts.

Because the speech had been hyped up in advance by the general's maladroit media managers and the finance minister (who has much to answer for in this connection), and in the event there was nothing in it, people were bound to feel cheated. The mandarin who came up with the description that the Chief Executive(CE), would be unfurling a 'people-friendly' economic package certainly deserves a prize for silliness if not a public whipping. Raising public hopes unnecessarily and then dashing them to the ground is not very smart politics. But then who cares?

Anyway, is the common Pakistani concerned about the sanctity of trademarks and intellectual property rights, two of the items the CE touched? If from the drab forest of verbiage laid before the nation's expectant eyes all that had to emerge was the imposition of GST and agricultural tax and a Rs 100 raise to low-grade government employees, this task could well have been left to the finance minister. People can put up with a lot but, if they have a choice in the matter, they do not like being treated like morons.

But if the general's potent sleeping pill did nothing else (apart, of course, from spreading its drowsy effects) it did end up exposing his government's vulnerability: that it has no tricks up its sleeve, no rabbits to pull out of its hat. A string of pious homilies, a stream of good intentions, exclusive reliance on the future tense (the only tense Pakistani rulers are comfortable with), and, in the end, thick references to Islam, the last resort of all Pakistani leaders when they run out of ideas or are otherwise stumped for answers.

In other words, what the general's speech seemed to confirm was the most serious charge yet laid against his regime: that born in the darkness of the night it still does not have a sense of direction.

To shake off this charge the regime by now should have moved beyond the realm of stern resolve and good intentions. But in not doing so, and instead getting mired in routine problems, it is only advertising the poverty of its intellectual armour. Governance, administrative reform, recasting the police force, examining the criminal justice system, drawing the outlines of a new structure for local bodies, something about which the Chief Executive has waxed eloquent: in all these spheres there is heavy use of the future tense but no policy measures.

Does it take an eternity to size up with these problems? A lot of work on them, here and there, has already been done. But everyone in Pakistan is interested in the short-fix, not with basics. So what we have instead, almost as if to submerge other noises, is the loud beating of the drums of accountability. Even these have fallen silent after the initial storm and fury over the first batch of sacrificial victims. It is reflective of this state of affairs that the CE himself has been reduced to proffering excuses, as he did in his speech, for the slow pace of accountability.

Increasingly, as was evident from day one, the regime's energies are being consumed in the effort to make the charges against Nawaz Sharif and the pathetic knights of his round table stick. Soon there will be constitutional petitions to argue and defend in the Supreme Court. Soon the spectre of legitimacy will loom ever larger before the military government. As the bureaucracy, on whom every military government relies, becomes ever more aloof and arrogant, the people will be left wondering as to what all the fuss was about. Nawaz Sharif's follies will then look less imposing than perhaps they do at present.

Already he is saying (when let out on parole for his mother-in-law's death) that he would continue with his mission if Allah permitted him to do so. God forbid this should happen. Pakistan, with its proven capacity for suffering all manner of injuries, can put up with most things but not a continuation of Nawaz Sharif's mission.

But to continue with our tale, for all the talk of coming to the rescue of the poor and deprived sections of society, the brunt of military reformism so far has fallen on the weakest shoulders. In Chakwal the ground next to the municipal committee office is full of confiscated rehris (handcarts) while the Chappar Bazaar, home to three generations of rehri-wallas, has been cleared in the name of removing encroachments. Too many handcarts of course are not a pretty sight. But with life tough and unemployment being the way it is, where are these wretched souls expected to go?

Are we not familiar with one of the foremost effects of the impoverishment of Russia? The flooding of the great flesh centres of the world with the choicest specimens of Russian womanhood. As the impoverishment of the Pakistani masses, under the gauntlet of the IMF and the World Bank, proceeds apace, do we want to see similar phenomena spreading their tentacles across our land?

It is not a question of democracy here. Democracy as seen and practised in this neck of the woods might happily be thrown into the waters of the Arabian Sea for all the difference it would make. There is nothing more comical or infuriating (take your pick) than a typical Pakistani politico vowing to reform the world. But the trouble is that worse than the established chicanery and mendacity of the politico is the smugness and pomposity of the standard Pakistani bureaucrat and the obtuseness of the military mind. This and no other is the clinching argument in favour of the tattered robes of democracy: that the alternatives on offer are infinitely worse.

True, in the Pakistani psyche there is a lurking fascination for Stalinist methods in politics. Talk to a normal Pakistani and his prescriptions for cleansing the body-politic will be quite bloodcurdling. But as we know, the army is a conservative institution with neither the vision nor the training to carry out any scheme of fundamental reform. Whenever it seizes power it will virtually repeat, with minor variations of course, the pattern of military interventions past. This can be taken almost as an iron rule of its behaviour in the civilian sphere. No wonder, General Musharraf's regime is proving no exception to this trend. Despite all the talk of fashioning a brave new world, it too is sticking faithfully to the old script reminiscent so strongly of the powerful stage appearances of Ayub, Yahya and Zia.

We need a break from this but any thought of an exit, at least at this point, seems to be the last thing on the regime's mind. This is bad news, for keeping the experience of the past in front of us, it can safely be assumed that things are likely to get much worse before they get any better. Can we afford this fatal drift? The answer would seem to be no but then who is listening?