IF a bystander, his curiosity aroused by a strange sound, were to put his ears to the ground, chances are he would hear a stricken creature thrashing its arms about in an attempt to keep its head above water.
Not to put too fine a point on it, this creature is the reformist government of General Pervez Musharraf, its elan already a bit withered and lost as it tries to fashion a coherent agenda from the rhetoric with which it has been trying to justify its assumption of power. There is certainly no dramatic turnaround in sympathy for Nawaz Sharif and his leading companions who now face the rough end of justice. But public memories being short, Nawaz Sharif's massive failings are being obscured and softened as time passes.
Forget about the drawing room classes who preach high-minded reform and practise a different morality. Consider instead the mood of ordinary people for whom the hijacking case is not the obsessive thing that it might be for the army command. What has military rule meant for them? Prices have not fallen, new jobs have not been created and the administrative juggernaut (thana, tehsil, kutchery) is as rickety and corrupt as before. So much for the army's monitoring system.
Earnest men in starched khaki, their collars and peak caps ablaze with red tabs, will of course bristle at these suggestions. In imperious undertones they can almost be heard saying, 'what do you expect in such a short time?' While they have a point they forget the rueful line that even a week is a long time in politics. And this regime has been around for nearly two months without much to show for itself.
True, a small herd of fattened cattle victims has been brought before the altar of accountability. But the voyeuristic delight provided by this spectacle has already palled. As it was bound to happen unless a constant stream of sacrificial victims was produced to feed the public's appetite for this kind of drama, a piece of psychology the Roman emperors understood only too well. With no addition to this herd, and no public quartering either, the spectators in what can be described as our national arena are beginning to feel cheated.
But by far more momentous is the regime's failure to set a clear course for itself. Where does it want to go? What is the holy grail it seeks? Good intentions abound but having heard too many of these in the past this is one thing the people of Pakistan are wary of.
Pressed for answers, the Chief Executive, who is giving more press interviews than is good for him, falls back upon a clutch of well-rehearsed lines: he wants to remove inter-provincial disharmony, revive the economy and devolve power to the provinces, and from there to the districts. For good measure, every now and then a shot is fired across the bows of 'sham' democracy. But a crucial question remains unanswered. If in over a year the army has not managed to reform WAPDA, on what grounds of faith does it expect people to believe that over a similar or longer time span it can reform the nation?
A word too about another myth currently being flogged to death: devolution. Quite apart from the fact that devolution of any sort and military rule are a contradiction in terms, no one has precisely defined what kind of devolution the Chief Executive has in mind. The impression being spread, however, is that when this still undefined concept acquires shape, 'real' democracy will arrive, bringing in its wake genuine 'empowerment', for the first time in their history, to the people of Pakistan.
No one need be under any illusion that the steel-frame of the central administrative structure is going to be dismantled any time soon or that with the coming of the new millennium deputy commissioners and superintendents of police will disappear into the shades. Devolution of power is just a fancy name being given to the concept of local bodies. Even when they come into existence (when precisely only the oracles can say), power will remain where it has always been: in the steel-frame of the administrative structure which - even more than railways, caramel custard and the English language - is the most enduring legacy of Queen Victoria's Empire.
Even in climes more salubrious than ours, local bodies are vehicles for delivering better municipal services. Nowhere - not in the US, Britain, France or Germany - are they a substitute for national democracy. While Pakistan can do with better garbage disposal, its foremost problem is finding better leadership and reducing the corruption, waywardness and lack of vision of its governing class, of which, as should be obvious, the military is also a part. This is a long-term process and not a trick which can be performed by pulling a switch. In any event, how will local elections a year or so hence address this problem? Or does GHQ think that by merely stepping into the ring and seizing power this problem stands resolved?
All this is very confusing but, on examination, hardly surprising. This is a regime born in the midst of confusion, its leading lights themselves admitting that on October 12, in response to the action taken by the prime minister, they had to act on the spur of the moment. So the 111 Brigade, which is to us what the Praetorian Guard was for the Roman Empire and the Janissaries for the Ottomans, was sent in and after a bit of confusion at the TV station, confusion being the hallmark of these events, power was seized, the prime minister and his colleagues arrested and the Constitution, that raddled document abused so often in our history, thrown into the dark once again.
Since dislodging a civilian government in Pakistan takes about as much time as fixing a complicated tyre puncture, sending Nawaz Sharif to the cleaners was the easy part. Creating some order out of the chaos of Pakistan's problems is more difficult. In coming to grips with this task the senior officers who removed Nawaz Sharif with so much aplomb look decidedly less sure of themselves.
It is scarcely surprising, therefore, if what the nation is being treated to is a roll-call of dismal events: uninspired appointments, the hollow clang of good intentions and the swiftness of a pair of oxen making their way up a steep mountain. Even after two months the overriding impression is of an army trying to improvize on the march.
This augurs ill for the future. Unlike a democratic government whose very legitimacy puts it under no desperate necessity to prove itself all the time, a government outside the constitutional pale has to justify itself by its performance. If it falters on this count it forfeits all reason to exist. General Pervez Musharraf's government, therefore, is under pressure to deliver. The question is, can it do so?
As if other problems were not enough, there is another theoretical knot which remains to be untangled. The army command's whole case for removing Nawaz Sharif is built on a single premise: that by removing General Musharraf as he flew home from Colombo and installing Lt-Gen Ziauddin in his place, Nawaz Sharif was sowing the seeds of factionalism in the army. His removal, therefore, had become necessary. Fine. But what justifies suspending the Constitution and banishing democracy? Between the premise and the conclusions we are seeing there is no logical connection.
If, however, the wider charge against Nawaz Sharif is that he was arbitrary in his ways and increasingly contemptuous of the institutional diversity of the state (a true enough accusation, by the way), how are matters helped by a retreat to militarism, a state of mind whose ruling principle is ad-hocism and the exercise of unquestioned authority? One can go on arguing like this till the moon rises but to no avail because in Pakistan today even elementary logic is open to abuse and imperial disdain.