WHEN Pakistanis talk politics they tend to dwell more on who deposed whom and a great deal less on who rehabilitated whom. In other words, the great champions of Pakistani history are remembered more for their work as undertakers rather than for the remarkable ability many of them have displayed to resurrect the ghosts of the past.
Bhutto was deposed by Zia and his generals. But before the great bar of public opinion he was also rehabilitated by them. By 1977 people were fed up with Bhutto, his populist antics and his autocratic rule. Then came Zia's coup and Bhutto was transformed from a tyrant to a martyr.
The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) which he led also got a shot in the arm. With Bhutto as prime minister a once vibrant political organization had fallen on evil days. The very feudals whom the party had trounced in the 1970 elections entered the PPP and began dominating it leading to the demoralization of the rank and file which was the party's real strength. The coup changed this because pitted against martial law the PPP rediscovered a sense of purpose.
For the next 11 years all attempts to suppress or split it came to nothing. So much so that when Zia's plane fell from the skies to hasten his tryst with his Maker, it became almost inevitable that Bhutto's daughter, Benazir Bhutto, should be the country's next leader. How she, in partnership with her husband, went on to amass a personal fortune and squander her political legacy is of course another story.
Politics in Pakistan, however, is full of surprises. Benazir Bhutto was forced from the PM's house for the second time in 1996 (her first dismissal having taken place three years earlier). By that time her name and that of her husband, Asif Zardari, had become mud because corruption and the ruling couple had become synonymous in the public eye. While Benazir remains a discredited commodity, the strange thing is that her husband is earning a measure of grudging public sympathy for no other reason than that he seems to be suffering imprisonment with a brave face.
Whenever he makes a court appearance, as he has to do every now and then, there is a twirl to his moustache and a roguish smile on his face. Pakistanis love underdogs and brave villains and at the moment Zardari is amply proving to be both.
For this the nation has to thank Nawaz Sharif and his accountability czar, Saifur Rehman. They could have put Zardari behind bars on any single charge which, if nothing else, would have ensured that he stayed out of public attention. But afflicted with the legal mania from which all Pakistani governments suffer, they had to pile up case after case against Zardari with the result that even after being in prison for the last three years only one case against him has come to a conclusion while the others drag on, allowing him to make court appearances with no little swagger in his step.
Al Capone was convicted not for murder or anything comparable but tax evasion. That effectively put an end to his criminal career but to think that such sophistication might be duplicated here is clearly unrealistic. If Al Capone had been a Pakistani we would have made a hero and a successful politician out of him too.
As if to prove that old habits die hard, it is now Nawaz Sharif who is being rehabilitated. Nawaz Sharif says General Musharraf is out to eliminate him politically. He need have no fear on this count. Before the military finish with him he too will be furnished with all the trappings of a hero.
When the military moved in on October 12 people responded with joy because by then they had had enough of the 'heavy mandate'. If at that time Nawaz Sharif had been packed off to a desert island he would have received a great send-off and his party, the Muslim League, would have been the first to readjust itself to the new realities.
But trust our ability to resurrect the dead from their graves. Three months ago the very notion of Nawaz Sharif being looked upon kindly by a jaded and frustrated public would have been dismissed as laughable. Now as the military government flounders and gives every indication of not having any sense of direction, that idea seems less ridiculous.
To Sharif's credit he has proved himself a courageous man by not submitting tamely to military rule as someone else in his place might easily have done. This has given heart to his party, the Muslim League, and prevented it from splitting as it surely would have done if Sharif had shown any weakness in his dealings with the military.
But more to Sharif's advantage is the military's confusion which is obscuring the memory of his many follies and excesses. Where people were expecting movement and dramatic results from the military government, they are being treated to a display of intellectual poverty and psychological paralysis. It is no wonder that those Muslim Leaguers hoping to take over the party have been reduced to silence because with the military government seemingly bereft of political ideas, they have been left with no other alternative.
It would seem that public support for the military takeover turned the new regime's head, making its leading figures think that they could do without the support or advice of the political class. This is proving to be a mistaken assumption because it is precisely the absence of a political input in its deliberations which is reinforcing the impression that the military regime has no sense of direction. As Sardar Mumtaz Ali Bhutto has forcefully argued in several articles in this newspaper, General Musharraf is doing himself no favour by shunning 'clean' politicians. An NGO point of view his government may have but a political perception of the country's problems it seems to be entirely without.
This attitude on the part of the generals may look strange but it is not new. For every profession, no matter how lowly or common, some training is thought to be essential. A cobbler will not make shoes or a tailor sew clothes unless he has had the right apprenticeship. No general or civilian leader untrained in economics would presume to style himself an economic expert. On economic matters therefore he will consult economic experts just as he will take legal advice from lawyers. But for the hardest of all professions - the art of government - all of us think we are eminently qualified.
The leading lights of this government also think that they are eminently qualified to run the nation's affairs. So far their only signal achievement is the gradual rehabilitation of Nawaz Sharif but their confidence in their abilities remains undaunted (one reason for this being that denied political feedback, the regime is retreating into a shell of its own at some remove from reality). But with the nation not sharing the same confidence, it is scarcely surprising if the same sense of frustration and helplessness that could be felt in the country just prior to the military takeover should be rising to the surface once again.