What ails Pakistan today is not Pervez Musharraf, in or out of uniform, nor indeed the lack of a stable political system. These are but symptoms of the graver malaise eating away at the heart of the state: the continued stranglehold of the armed forces over all power. The proposed palliatives — the bitter pills in the form of Musharraf as a civilian president, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif or the erstwhile king’s party, the Muslim League-Q, as heirs apparent to the throne resting on military boots — are not the answer to the people’s woes. They’ve been there, done that. How many times? They’ve lost count.

The equation of the armed forces’ political and economic interests with those of the country is what the people find most painful. Musharraf’s ‘Pakistan first’ slogan rings hollow when he himself appears to be just a pawn in the bigger scheme of things. He could have bailed out, if not redeemed himself, by stepping down simultaneously as the army chief and president. But that’s not what he did. He has bailed his institution out of politics run amuck, and borne the cross of a civilian presidency with little credibility.

Ditched by his men in khaki, he will now face the music of opposition while the army which was being blamed for everything that went wrong in the past eight years will continue to pull the strings from behind the scenes. So here’s to the Pakistan Army first, and the rest thereafter. The institution has evolved little since its early days of coming to power within years of Pakistan’s independence. It continues to have an insatiable appetite for gobbling up all the other institutions vested with any power, and which it regards as its competitors.

... contd.