When Musharraf announced the postponement from January 9 he added the word ‘transparent’ to free and fair in an attempt to reassure people of his good intentions but it did not work. Most people believe that the only reason for the postponement was to give the ‘King’s party’ a chance to recover. The Pakistan Muslim League (Q) is today the most discredited political party in Pakistan but before the assassination of Benazir had seemed in a position to cobble a government together. A government that would be at Musharraf’s beck and call. This idea was based on the belief that although the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) would be the single largest it would not have a majority.

Now if the election goes ahead the PPP is expected to sweep and if there is an understanding with Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League (N), as many say there is, then the two could come together with a big enough majority to impeach Musharraf. There is talk of this as there is talk of the need for the ex-General to hang up his boots.

Rarely has anyone in public life lost popularity as rapidly as Musharraf has. As military dictators go he was relatively popular for most of the ten years he has been in power. Good things happened on his watch and people noticed. He allowed the media more freedom than it had ever known and his free market economic policies brought visible economic benefits.

It was only when he sacked the Chief Justice last March that the trouble started. Lawyers took to the streets to demand judicial independence and their movement quickly enveloped other areas of civil society. Within months Musharraf was under such sustained siege that the American state department was forced to get actively involved in persuading their favourite military dictator to do something to improve his democratic credentials. It was as a result of this that Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan and became the country’s leading symbol of democracy. With all her flaws she was seen as Pakistan’s only real political leader.

With her dead, is democracy still possible? On this, there are two views. Some like the human rights activist, Asma Jehangir, believe that real democracy will not be possible until there is another political leader as charismatic as Benazir. Others believe that the terrible tragedy of Benazir Bhutto’s death has made ordinary Pakistanis even more determined to continue the fight for democracy. There is a sense that there has to be something evil in a regime that could not prevent the assassination of Benazir. Why was more not done to investigate the first attack on her procession last October in Karachi? Why was she so badly protected that a man with a pistol could get so close to her?

As someone who returned to Pakistan after an absence of nearly six years, I found the army more unpopular than I remember it being in the twenty years that I have covered Pakistan. Wherever I went, whoever I talked to, I heard the army reviled. Even the handful of Pakistanis who continue to believe that Musharraf has been good for the country support him personally rather than military rule in general.

Pakistan’s problem is that the army is virtually its only real institution of governance. The judiciary has been contained to such an extent that more than half the judges have been replaced by Musharraf’s handpicked flunkeys. The executive has played so subservient a role that Musharraf has been in total charge. And, political parties have been weakened by exiled leaders and elections held under the control of a military dictator.

Weakened or not, it is political parties and free elections that Pakistan needs if it is to solve its grim problems. Musharraf’s most remarkable achievement has been that he succeeded in convincing the Americans that he was their best bet in Pakistan. Without him, he made them believe, there would be a descent into jihadi terrorism and chaos. The truth is that under Musharraf that descent has happened. Balochistan, Swat and Waziristan all seem to have slipped out of the Pakistan army’s control and in cities like Lahore and Karachi there are shadowy groups whose raison d’etre is Islamist violence. These groups have links with the Pakistani army and the ISI as well as natural links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and the violence filters into even the rarified atmosphere of Lahore’s drawing rooms.

On my last evening in Lahore I met a journalist who had been receiving letters from a group that called itself the Taliban-e-Waziristan. The letters warned of violent action if the journalist continued to support ‘liberal, Western’ ideas. ‘We had the letters checked out’ the journalist said ‘and they turned out to be genuine. But, nobody knows what we should be doing to protect ourselves. It’s a bad situation and we can only hope that there are genuine elections soon and things improve as a result’.

Can there be free, fair and ‘transparent’ elections soon in Pakistan? When I asked people this question I got almost the same answer from everyone. They said that if the Americans want elections to be free and fair they will be but there is no sign yet that they have given up on their favourite military dictator. No sign that anyone in Washington has understood that if Pakistan is on the verge of becoming jihad central then part of the blame lies with American foreign policy in South Asia. It’s time to let their favourite military dictator go.