Machiavelli people don't know

The political shenanigans in evidence since February 18 are like black comedy. With utter disregard for principles and propriety, prominent leaders are pursuing personal rather than a national agenda, oblivious to the pervasive public hate.

Less than seven months after February 18 election that raised people's hopes for better times to come, the morale is down in the dumps.

No meaningful movement on Ms Benazir Bhutto's assassination, civil war in the NWFP, rising prices, food inflation and scarcity hitting people, long hours of power outages, power riots, law and order a shambles, a state of mass anxiety in society have all but finished the political enthusiasm of people that seemed palpable in March.

Inertia and disappointment are now the hallmark of public reaction to the forthcoming presidential election. It is in the middle of national hopelessness that Mr Asif Ali Zardari and his cronies will march towards the house on the hill in Islamabad.

More and more people say that Pakistani politics is Machiavellian, a name considered synonymous with deviousness. Does Machiavelli deserve it? My answer is no.

Niccolo Machiavelli, the son of a lawyer, was born on May 3, 1469, in Florence, Italy. Educated in Latin and Italian classics he was elected by the Great Council as the Secretary to the second Chancery of the Republic of Florence in 1498. For fourteen years from then he distinguished himself as a diplomat and carried out several important foreign missions. He displayed a rare "keenness of observations and insight into the hidden thoughts of the men he was dealing with."