As so often before, the people of Pakistan are once again being asked to suspend disbelief and go along with another ploy to keep someone in power. This is the only interpretation which fits the referendum to whose stirring tune the nation is all set to march.

Only fools will waste breath upon legalities. General Musharraf's referendum has as much basis in the Constitution as his coup d'etat. Lord of the jungle, it is up to him whether to lay an egg or deliver a child.

Generals Aziz and Mahmood did not consult the Constitution when they deposed Nawaz Sharif from power. General Musharraf did not open the Constitution when he made himself president and all but pushed the hapless Rafiq Tarar out of the President's House. For the past twenty years and more Mr Sharifuddin Pirzada has been reading the Constitution for the benefit of Pakistan's military rulers and, as even gullible adults in the wide spaces of the Republic know by now, his reading of the Constitution is both dynamic and progressive, in tune with the changing times. Are there any grounds then for being agitated by General Musharraf's attempt to anoint himself president for the next five years?

There are because far from strengthening anything or anybody, it will take Pakistan further away from the goal which has always eluded it: a stable political order. It is not a question of going back to Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif - the false argument deployed by the apologists of the military government - but of ensuring respect for laws and institutions.

Military interventions are bad precisely for this reason: based upon nothing more fixed than the tips of the army's bayonets, they lead to the birth of recurring bouts of political anarchy. There is no need to list the wages of military rule, of what the nation has been through at the hands of previous military rulers. Those wages are etched upon the nation's consciousness, branded upon its soul. Who has the right to drag the nation over similar paths again?

General Musharraf of course has his excuses, the standard arguments of indispensability deployed by every captain reluctant to leave the deck. He has shifted the goalposts before and is doing so again: saying that his remaining at the helm is necessary for continuity, whatever this means, and for protecting his 'reforms', whose outline is all but invisible to most Pakistanis. But excuses are one thing, harsh reality another. Apart from client status of the United States, what has Pakistan achieved in two and a half years? At the gates of what promised kingdom will Pakistan arrive if Gen Musharraf, providence permitting, remains at the helm for another five years? We'll be back at the starting line, crying over time lost and bewailing the fate which keeps us tied to the same spot.

There is a military angle to this as well. Gen Musharraf wants not only to be president but also army chief for the next five years. Where will this leave the army? The Pakistan army needs full-time commanders who make way for fresh souls when their time (constitutionally-stipulated) comes to an end. In the nature of things a part-time commander, such as Generals Yahya and Zia were in the past and General Musharraf is now, cannot do justice to his military responsibilities. Like Faiz's lover he is torn between the demands of work and love, a figure caught between two stools. But he is also more dangerous because he leaves frustration in his wake. No one relishes a permanent commander-in-chief who blocks movement at the top of the military pyramid.

As a nation we have yet to answer one question honestly. Who got rid of Zia? By 1988 - that is, after Zia had been ruling the country for eleven years - the very longevity of his rule had become tiresome. His face with its trademark hypocritical smile had been around for too long. If familiarity breeds contempt, eternity breeds boredom. Husbands tire of their wives (as indeed wives tire of husbands) and even the most doting parents sometimes wish their kids would just shut up. Change and flux, the ebb and flow of the tide, lie at the very heart of life.

Patriarchs who never retire, rulers who think they are indispensable, leaders for whom deception becomes second nature, stir feelings of unease, if not outright revolt, in the human breast. The Conservatives got rid of even Maggie Thatcher, their strongest bulwark, in the end. They gave various reasons for stabbing her but the real one was that after eleven years they just couldn't stand her or her swinging handbag anymore.

By declaring himself army chief until further orders and by going for a referendum which will baptise him as president for five years (on top of the three he will already have had) General Musharraf is not so much tempting fate as testing his countrymen's patience. Which doesn't mean he cannot get away with it. If Ayub and Zia could (both lasting for eleven years apiece) why not him?

But there will be no escaping two related consequences: a growing loss of faith in the country's ability to find a sense of direction and ever higher levels of cynicism. The chattering and even the educated classes have become much too cynical of the country and its power mechanics. More than external threats, it is this corrosion of the spirit which is the greatest threat to the country. Becoming an appendage of the United States hasn't helped matters either. We started off by giving air bases to the US and have ended up giving the FBI and other US agencies the free run of our cities (the raids in Faisalabad being but the most conspicuous examples of this trend). The feeling is growing that we are no longer in control of our affairs.

For all its failings, does Pakistan deserve this? Like an animal whose spirit has been beaten out of it, does it deserve to be led by the nose through one circus performance after another? How great a thing it would be if eschewing personal ambition General Musharraf were to hold elections and then go home? He would be hailed as the nation's saviour and be given a place in the nation's pantheon next only to Jinnah. But to behave in this self-sacrificing manner requires greatness of heart and breadth of vision. These qualities are nowhere to be found in Pakistan's squalid political arena. That is why we are condemned to repeat the same games over and over again, only faces changing, the underlying welter of small ambition remaining depressingly the same.

Consider also the pathetic cast of characters rallying to Gen Musharraf's cause. We have the timeservers of the Quaid-I-Azam Muslim League, the discredited Leghari, the egregious Tahirul Qadri, and Imran Khan for whom I will use no adjective but who has diminished himself by dining in this company: all of them hoping to catch some crumbs from Gen Musharraf's table. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are pictures of irrelevance, their hopes blasted not because Gen Musharraf says he will not allow them into the political ring but because self-interest and self-preservation are their guiding passions. The religious parties have taken the correct stand, clear and forthright: no truck with the referendum. But their tragedy is that not many people will flock to their banner.

As for that mythic entity, the 'silent majority', drained of spirit and vigour it is having a hard time surviving in these inflationary times. What enthusiasm can it have for the complex political maneuvers being devised by the military government?

Hence a nagging question which refuses to go away: why go through the farce of polling? What need to throw dust in our own eyes? Why not simply take a leaf out of WAPDA's book and like soldiers in uniform checking electricity meters, ask soldiers in uniform to go from house to house, questionnaire in hand, asking the people whether they were for or against President Musharraf? Armed with the virtue of simplicity, this method of ascertaining the popular will, apart from anything else, would cut through the fog and go straight to the heart of the matter.