“IT is not our intention to be prescriptive about restoring democracy in Pakistan,” says a senior State Department official when I ask him about President Musharraf’s disdainful dismissal of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif as passe ... trashed into the dump that won’t recycle junk. But BB was in the US recently. Each time she’s here, a meeting of the minds — if you can call it that — takes place between her and Donald Camp, Deputy Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs. Camp is a fixture who has seen BB and MNS come and go, and knows exactly how things are run back home.

Two days to go for the referendum that has dealt Musharraf a bloody nose by the two US newspapers Pakistan holds in mighty awe: The New York Times and the Washington Post. What we don’t realize is the media war between the two. When Post sat on editorial judgment on Musharraf, the seven-Pulitzer winner Times’ knee-jerk reaction for not being the one to cast the first stone at the Pakistani president was to throw as many stones as it could conjure up to demolish him altogether in its editorial: Pakistan’s Perpetual President. While the alliteration is alluring, the content betrays a typical ‘ugly American’ trait of use and discard. Musharraf, once the good guy, according to Times, has now gotten too big for his boots and needs to be cut to size.

I think what he needs is to put his ‘governor-generals’ on a short rope. Khalid Maqbool shot his mouth off with the media, not to mention, put the political gigolo Tariq Aziz back on the podium, and hop into bed with the geckos of Gujrat! It was Chaudhry Shujaat’s nouveau riche home in Islamabad where Nawaz Sharif always stayed, thick as thieves they were then. Remember how Shujaat as the interior minister converted the FIA into his personal fiefdom? General Maqbool is no judge of men, or is he hoping to live in the Governor’s House beyond October and, therefore, must please his master?

Then we have the great Sherpao, the Frontier lion, who, as chief minister, made merry and gave plots to cronies and when accountability time came, conveniently slipped out of the country. Today, being best friends with Guv Iftikhar has paid off with the court declaring Sherpao innocent as a lamb! Case closed.

Musharraf may be an honourable man, but his honchos are not.

“Corruption (BB’s crime) according to Musharraf means breaking the law. Is he not breaking the law by holding a referenda which is unconstitutional? I intend going back and contesting the elections. It’s my fundamental human right. Let’s see how he stops me?” Benazir tells Gita Bajaj of Eye On Asia in a TV interview in New York.

Donning her generic green silk shalwar kamiz with a white dupatta draped ungainly close to her face, making her double-chin stand out all the more, BB is still majestic and very much in love with Asif Zardari: “Musharraf has intimidated and blackmailed me by arresting my husband, but I am a lucky woman to be married to Asif. No other man would have been able to put up with the pressure causing a great setback to my party, but Asif stood strong, he has nerves of steel, he will never crumble.”

BB tells Gita that she is more concerned about the future of Pakistan than her own future, “During the last three years, Musharraf has taken the country dangerously close to a nuclear war with India and Afghanistan. My party called on him to break with the Taliban because we could see them posing a strategic danger, but he did not listen until they caused havoc on New York and Afghanistan.” Such posturing does not wash well with Washington who knows that it was BB’s Interior Minister General Naseerullah Babar who brought the Taliban into this world, and Nawaz Sharif’s dream of political immortality that made us go nuclear (the only favor he did to Pakistan).

“As the author and architect of Kargil, Musharraf has blood on his hand ... hundreds of Pakistanis and Indians were killed. The ghosts of Kargil will never forgive him,” says BB, adding that only a democrat, not a dictator, can resolve the Kashmir dispute. She’s much mellowed and desperately home-sick. “I want to be with my people again without fear of military intervention,” replies BB to Gita’s question: “What’s your fondest wish?”

Tears well up when she’s asked about her worst fears: “My exile lasting longer.” While she plans to return and fight the elections even from behind bars, Musharraf and his wiseacres addicted to power and not wanting to let go are devising plans to bar BB and MNS from holding office for a third term.

Gita is impressed: “Ms Bhutto comes across as well-informed and her courage of conviction is commendable,” she tells me. BB, the once darling of the foreign press, was here to reinvent her magic into cajoling them to accompany her to Pakistan because she still makes a good copy! Visually as well as editorially.

Musharraf’s men better not nix the press. If their boss wants to impress his new best friends, the Americans in copycat democracy back home, then they must learn how Michael Moore gets away with impugning Bush in his book Stupid White Men, which pulls no punches, aims direct at “dumb white guy” politicians. Yet Bush bullies dare not touch him!

For seven weeks running, Moore’s book is hitting the #1 New York Times best-seller’s list. With such a provocative title, why would white and fat men want to read such a book that labels them ‘stupid’? But the civil libertarians are doing exactly that. Moore, who himself is white and fat, says: “White people give me problems — my white teacher who flunked me; my white landlord who kept my security deposit; my white car salesman who sold me a lemon (defective car). I now hire blacks who still occupy the bottom rung in everything here.”

And his advice to a black guy driving a nice car is: “Blow up a white doll and seat it at the back. The police won’t stop you or pull you over because they will think you are the chauffeur of the white woman and will let you go!”

A dichotomy such as this can only occur in America: “With Bush bagging 80 per cent approval ratings and me bagging the best-selling populist title,” Moore explains the paradox in one simple sentence: “that’s democracy and it’s our right to question the leader, that’s what freedom is all about.”

Is the Pakistani Establishment listening?

Mariane Pearl’s elan for Pakistan’s silent majority appearing in New York Times is worth taking note of. Her purity of thought transcends everything banal, opportunistic, vindictive and ugly. Our silent majority owe Mariane her only wish: “In memory of Danny and the future of our son who is almost here, I want to ask the people of Pakistan to act upon the sentiments they have expressed and build a memorial for Danny in Karachi. I will bring our son to this memorial and tell him this is the land where his father died, but that the people here stood by us, so that his death would not be in vain.”