Succumbing to external pressure, we have said goodbye to cherished myths and long-held positions which almost had the status of Biblical commandments with us. But as the National Reconstruction Bureau's proposed hatchet job on the Constitution makes clear, none of this amazing flexibility appears to have rubbed off on the military government's internal policies.

This is not any unconscious dichotomy. This is the wisdom of the angry husband and father who, while careful not to pick a quarrel with outsiders, is stern and unforgiving within the confines of his home.

The proposed job on the Constitution aims at vesting all power in General Musharraf's hands and making parliament, cabinet, prime minister and everything else subservient to him. While the position of every institution and organ in the proposed dispensation is fluid and tenuous, dependent in the last resort on the whims or wishes of the president, only that of the president is fixed, carved in stone.

Running through the turgid prose of the NRB's proposals are the heavy footprints of Pakistan's previous military dictators, each of whom tried to fashion a political system in his image. But through the same pages also runs a parallel image which is a reminder of how all those experiments came to grief. Obviously, we are not good at learning anything from the past.

This is all the more surprising in a nation where the past, more than anything else, is the favourite subject of political discourse. We are always talking about where, when and how we went wrong. As we continue to flounder, this preoccupation with the past has become an obsession. Yet, a strange thing is at work. Even as we talk of the past and dwell on it, we seem unable to cull any lessons for the future.

What then are we headed for? The answer is a sad one: another attempt at perpetuating the contours of military or quasi-military rule. How many times have we not been here before? Yet we seem fated to go round and round the same spot.

It is a tiresome exercise repeating the familiar follies of military rule. But a common thread runs through them all: when their time was up and those regimes collapsed under their own weight, their political experiments, expected to last forever, went with them. What makes Gen Musharraf think his experiment will prove any more enduring?

There is another thing we tend to forget. The army's record in both war and peace scarcely entitles it to assume the role of national lawgiver. True, all the leading actors in Pakistan's unfolding drama have proved dismal at their roles. But the army, perhaps because it has had the longest lines to remember, more than the others.

This is a general principle which also has a specific application. What is Gen Musharraf's title to the position of lawgiver? It rests on two things: (1) the Oct. '99 takeover, the shine from which has already gone, and (2) the April 2002 referendum, an affair so embarrassing in the conducting that it extracted an apology even from Gen Musharraf's reluctant lips.

When General de Gaulle gave France the Fifth Republic and a new political system he was a democratically chosen leader. The army did not place him in power. Gen Musharraf insists the masses turned out in large numbers to vote for him in the referendum. Except for his diehard supporters, most Pakistanis would shrug their shoulders on hearing this or burst out laughing.

Some important variations, however, are to be noted. In a larger sense history might be repeating itself, but in some details new ground is being broken. In seeking to strengthen the office of president, Gen Musharraf is set to surpass even Gen Zia's ambitions who was no weakling in such matters.

Gen Zia gave himself the power to sack the National Assembly. Which means that if he wanted to dismiss the prime minister he had to go the whole hog and disrupt the entire system. Gen Musharraf is giving himself a choice: either to sack the National Assembly as a whole or just to pick on the cabinet and prime minister and send them home, a proviso that effectively turns the prime minister into a presidential puppet.

In the period 1947-58, political stability eluded Pakistan because of the excessive power vested in first the governor general's office and later the president's. Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad and President Iskander Mirza removed and installed prime ministers at will, giving the impression of a constant game of musical chairs being played in the country. Are we returning to that era? After undermining the foundations of parliamentary government will we then say that the politicians have once again failed?

Let's read a bit more. Should the prime minister wish to dissolve the National Assembly he would run up against two hurdles: the president could dismiss him or ask the National Assembly whether it wanted to be dissolved.

To further strengthen the president's hands, the governors would be appointed by him in his discretion and not on the advice of the prime minister. The National Security Council with the service chiefs sitting in it would be another adjunct to his power. Add to this the fact that Gen Musharraf, in love with his uniform, will keep wearing his uniform as army chief and we have a situation where in the name of 'real' democracy we will have achieved authoritarian overkill.

This is no recipe for stability. Our history tells us that the moment the strongman slips, the moment he loses his touch, the system he has invented goes straight out of the window. Whatever befalls the strongman - and if the history of Pakistan is any guide, his is usually a dusty end - the country is back from where it started.

Gen Musharraf's own position is not in doubt. He should realize this. Through long experience of military rule the people of Pakistan have acquired a pragmatic taste in politics. Like their judges, they too have come to accept the 'doctrine of necessity' - which amounts to accepting evils you can do nothing about.

They would willingly accept a Musharraf presidency provided (1) their intelligence is not insulted all the time by too many lectures about 'real' democracy and (2) Gen Musharraf doesn't insist on reserving everything for his political cartoons such as the leaders of the Q League and the National Alliance.

Hopefully, the political parties have learned their lesson: they can't play ducks and drakes with democracy. Hopefully, the army too has learned its lesson: it doesn't have the answers to everything. This double realization could be an effective basis for a 'pragmatic' democratic restoration.

But this seems to be the last thing on the military mind. To judge by the NRB's proposals what is being sought is a democratic facade, the label of democracy on an authoritarian body.

Again, much of this was expected, Pakistani strongmen not being famous for renouncing power or conducting orderly retreats. But after the shambles of the last nine months - U-turns, referendum and all - it might have been supposed that democracy, of the non-NRB variety, would be given a chance to breathe. But no such luck. The future is set to be a continuation of the present through other means.

Abandoning the Taliban and giving up the call to arms in Kashmir were ideas whose time had come but for which we can take no credit because these were virtually forced down our throat. The real modern idea is to build a stable democracy and sweep the cobwebs of ancient myths from the Pakistani mind.

But how is this to be done? External pressure (Armitage and company to the rescue) made us abandon our external obsessions. How are we going to cure our internal maladies?