Again, Desperate Times We all know the story about the coming of wolf.

Now let`s try another example someone calls out dinner is served, people lift their bodies from the TV lounge to the dining hall anticipating to be fed. However, what they get is laughs and claps but no food. Do this a cuple of times and they will stop responding to the call for food. But if there is no other source of food, and the kitchen is a vault guarded by armed militia, some of them will be drawn to the teasing call likes moths to a flame. Starvation will fuel their hope like foliage fuels wild fire. Need makes you naive, naivette fuels hope. To survive you need food, to get food you need hope--in this example only.

The situation in Pakistan is similar. What option is there but to be hopeful ? What if this is the chef that will finally feed us. What if he is the wolf that will eat the rats. Or the mouse that will bell the cat. Or whatever metaphor suits your fancy to get the point that I think you have already gotten.

My assessment is that he is our man. I will go as far as saying that our nation has waited a long time for a man like him. Zia and Ayub were different as were the circumstances during their rule. Musharraf is man markedly different from Zia, Ayub and Yahya. He has the same tendency to be corrupted by power as the next human being, but he has lot more character to fight that urge. And this man I beleive is not afraid and he talks straighter and more sensibly than anyone else we have had at the helm.

Yes he has inducted old timers into his cabinet who have served every other military regime. The servants are not at fault here though, other than they are good servants, they will faithfully carry out what the masters tell them and they have the experience and expertise to get it done. When the master say do evil they will do evil, when the master says do good they will do good.

Fresher entries may has purer records but not the ability to squeeze results out of really clanky machinery.

The man at the top is what matters. There is no way his immediate sub-ordiantes can stray, but it will take him sometime to get down to bribe sucking patwari.