The re-election of General Pervez Musharraf by a truncated electoral college, where opposition MPs had either resigned or boycotted the election, means different things to different quarters. To America and the Pakistan army, the two ubiquitous constants in the country’s uncertain politics since the early years, it means continuation and reassurance of their ability to influence who gets what.

The judiciary can hold its head high, saying it has asserted its independence by restraining the government from announcing the obvious result, pending its probe into Musharraf’s eligibility to stand for a second term. For the ruling coalition it means laying a claim to power for the next five years.

The opposition gets another chance to vindicate its stance, with America and the army keeping them out. Benazir Bhutto gets to start with a slate washed clean of corruption charges; and the very predictable Maulana Fazlur Rahman gets another chance to masquerade his pragmatism to the military establishment and the US. Here’s a ‘good’ Islamist with roots in his people, an increasingly rare breed, that the world can do business with if it has to.

The only ones who don’t know what a re-elected Musharraf means are, once again, the people of Pakistan. They have remained conspicuous by their absence in the opposition’s and the legal fraternity’s recent street battles against the government’s ham-handed law enforcement apparatus. The depoliticisation of the public mind in Pakistan has been nearly achieved. The people have realised their irrelevance to the governance that the powers that be impose on them from time to time. They are even wary of the democratic experiments that this country has been subjected to over the years. The reasons are based on collective memory.

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