While some are celebrating the peaceful transfer of power from one elected civilian regime to another, many feel their stomachs churning. We claim to exalt noble ideals, honesty, justice, transparency and truth in government and, at the same time, we honour those who epitomise the opposite.

So what’s new? Some will ask. Don’t we love cultivating illusions and, transparent deceptions to give a man the precious sensation of being a unique specimen of humanity, a distinct personality and deserving of special consideration? And if the person doing the praising is Nawaz Sharif (at his lunch to bid Zardari adieu), is that not all the more fun? After all, if they are not quite peas from the same pod they are birds of a feather. Some are rewarded and honoured instead of being punished. Have we not learnt to take such things in our stride? Are we not an ‘anything goes’ society?

Take, for example, the May 11 elections. We were told Sindhis voted for the Zardari PPP only because it was a Sindhi party. As it turned out, that was not wholly true. By one count Rs6.3 billion were spent by political parties during the course of the elections, mostly to purchase votes. And, as we also know, the poor, anywhere in Pakistan can be bought for a trifling price. Hence, a free ride to the polling station, a sumptuous lunch and a handful of notes (with the local wadera urging them on) are irresistible goodies for the impoverished hari voter. We know all this, but has it made the slightest difference?

Actually, in the past five years nothing much is left for us to believe. Not yesterday’s noble ideals; not love of country caricatured by the kleptocrats who ruled us; not hope for a better future, nothing at all. We now know what the Romans must have felt like when ruled by Nero.

Instead of banking his treasure in the hearts of the people, did not Zardari choose to bank it elsewhere? I dare say Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry and Rafique Tarar were not popular presidents but at least they did not make us feel ashamed of being Pakistanis.

But it’s not only our sensitivities that Zardari has offended, he has sullied democracy. Democracy is in full retreat in Pakistan. Five years of Zardari have put paid to the notion that democracy works. It manifestly does not. Expectations that democracy would generate employment and bring about growth and equity were trashed by Zardari’s handling of the economy; even getting the basics – stabilising debts and inflation – right proved beyond him. In fact, he demonstrated conclusively that his government could not run a railway, an airline, a steel mill or an insurance company; not even a ghee mill, what to speak of the country.

Consider, Pakistan today generates only as much electricity as a dozen post-industrial towns in the UK, excluding London. And that’s not because we cannot generate more, or don’t want to, but because those who could never got a chance and those who did were removed because they didn’t have a cosy relationship with the maximum leader.

Crony capitalism in the Zardari era reached its apogee. And corruption was at a stage that the decisive factor in any business deal was to have the right political connection. It’s no accident that just about anybody who had anything to do with oil, gas and power-generation policies over the past five years is being investigated for corruption.

On the one hand, Zardari’s minions claimed it was not the fault of democracy or Zardari for their woeful performance but of the public who in nascent democracies such as ours pitch their expectations of democracy far too high. On the other hand, his opponents insist that it is not democracy which failed but Zardari who was unable to manage the people’s expectations in a manner that would maintain critical public support for democracy, especially in difficult times, and thereby prevent a reversion to ‘authoritarian nostalgia’.

Both are right in some respects. But these are fine differences which the hoi polloi do not really understand or care about. Instead of demonstrating to the masses that he understood and shared their pain and suffering, Zardari, and his coterie acted not only as disinterested rich men but ‘as foes of moderation and champions of excess’ at a time of great deprivation.

The fact is Zardari was no statesman. His intelligence is intuitive and superficial; he has a tendency to oversimplify; he thinks he’s a know all; his disregard for accuracy, objectivity and consistency when they interfere with his aims are marked. And while his ability to achieve his ends undisturbed by scruples, doubts and criticisms can be an asset to a journalist, it’s a positive disadvantage for a statesman. However, none of those characteristics harmed him as much as the perception of his personal involvement in so many disclosures of graft and malgovernance. That laid him low and, in boxing parlance, as the elections results revealed, out for the count.

Resultantly the people gave up on him but, alas, also politicians in general. They have started to look towards the military as a source of deliverance from the kleptocracy Pakistan has become. In fact, roughly 60 percent of Pakistanis polled in a comprehensive regional survey said that the country should be ruled by the army, one of the highest votes of support for military rule in the world.

As Zardari sails into the sunset, hopefully never to return in any guise, a nation battered and bruised from his five year stewardship looks to his successor for succour. Nawaz must remove the notion fast gathering pace that ‘voting is worthless.’ And that ‘the progress of democracy has been halted indefinitely’.

One can only wish him well and leave him with the caution that it is not from Rawalpindi that the danger arises to democracy but from an irate and despondent populace and from North Waziristan, Balochistan, Punjab and Karachi where the real opposition lurks, gun in hand, with a bomb in the satchel praying for one more Zardari so that they will not need to use either of their weapons to win.

The writer is a former ambassador.Email: charles123it@hotmail.com