General Pervez Musharraf stops at traffic lights like an ordinary citizen. He has distanced himself from the mullahs. He holds open house for the media to demonstrate what a regular guy he is. He pets his dog for the world's cameras, upsetting the mullahs further. Prime mover of Kargil, he unilaterally offers to demilitarise the Indo-Pak border, then re-engages in Uri. And he likes music. Mixed picture, but dictators are a bag of mixed nuts. The latterday dictator has to be more creative than his predecessors because times have changed. Traditionally, dictators have retained office by robbing the people of the ability to make informed choices. He did this either by embodying national aspirations, or by cutting off access to information and building a world myth in the vacuum.The media, long-distance telephony and the Internet have put paid to the latter option. Hence General Musharraf's openness to photo shoots. Hence the petting of dogs. Since he cannot roll back the information age, he is forced to useit. He has to project himself as the happy face of Pakistan to the multilateral organisations and the minders of the global society.The former option is still a going concern and Musharraf stands for progress in society and modernity in government. Unfortunately for him, he has also promised elections in the future. His predecessor Zia promised several and came to a sticky end. In fact, very few of the classical dictators have died peacefully in their beds, their empires intact. Those who survived have done their people a terminal disservice, even those who came to power as the last hope of a beleaguered nation.In 1971, Uganda celebrated the ouster of Milton Obote and welcomed Idi Amin, a former sergeant. The very next year, Amin ripped the belly out of the economy by evicting the Asians. In short order, he was elected chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, awarded himself the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Cross and the Military Cross, along with the wholly fictitious title ofConqueror of the British Empire. Along the way, he dismembered a wife and made political murder a quotidian affair. He now leads a reclusive life in an oil-sheikh suburb in Jeddah.The trail of ignominy in exile was blazed by Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, who was buried in Rabat two years ago. It was a small family ceremony, because the Moroccans had just expelled his retinue. In his heyday, Mobutu's personal worth exceeded that of most African nations.In Asia, Pol Pot stood up for Cambodia when the US ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk. His Khmer Rouge rolled into Phnom Penh when the US pulled out of Vietnam in 1973. But the historical wrong of the US-backed coup was not put right. Instead, Cambodia's capital became one of the few cities in Asia to be spared the scourge of a migration of the rural poor into the cities. While Delhi was in the process of doubling its population, there were no people at all in Phnom Penh. They had all been driven out to the killing fields.The television images of Pol Pot'sdeath, of soldiers throwing his meagre possessions on a fire by his hut, sending a whole era up in smoke, marked one of the turning points of history. But much earlier, in 1989, television went beyond reporting the end of a dictatorship - it made one inevitable.On Christmas Eve that year, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were brought to trial for the rape of a nation and steadfastly denied the authority of its court. Prosecutor Gica Popa's charges began with systematic starvation and ended with genocide: "These two defendants procured the most luxurious foodstuffs and clothes from abroad. The people only received 200 grams per day, against an identity card." It was useless for the Ceausescus to take the high moral ground when the first images of the interiors of the Primaverii palace were being shown on national television. The new authorities had them summarily shot.In fact, every postwar dictator who has tried to rule by the old paradigm - by cutting off access to the world and fashioning a new myth,like the original Roman dictators has either been ousted or died as violently as he came to power. The survivors are those who either identified their personal ambitions with those of the State, like Kim Il Sung of North Korea or, like Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore, stood for material progress.Kim consolidated his rule through Juche, a national philosophy that made an attempt to unseat him equivalent to a crime against the State. In his last days, Kim updated Juche to make acceptance of his successor a national duty.Less sophisticated but as successful is the strategy used by Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, the icons of the movement against western civilisation. Like General Musharraf, they came to power as saviors of the people. Gaddafi was expected to bring about an economic revolution by getting a better deal for Lybian oil. He has indeed guaranteed the prosperity of the average Lybian, but at a massive cost to civil society.In Iraq, years of economic sanctions have left only the barest tatters ofthe welfare state in place, yet few see the innate absurdity of Saddam's career. He took a small difference of opinion with Iran over the Shatt al-Arab waterway and turned it into an excuse for militarisation on a scale that invited the first humanitarian engagement. Today, the fear of the US meddling with Iraq - which owes to his own policies - helps sustain his rule.It would be interesting to see what new route General Musharraf charts out for himself. He must, for he has little in common with these dictators. Pakistan's society is too evolved for a clampdown to work (as are its media). But unlike India's, it is too rudimentary to oppose authoritarianism instinctively. There can be no `night of the generals' here, but a crepuscular haze in which Musharraf must walk a very narrow line between central authority and democracy. And he will have to deliver what the people want economic progress, which does not mean the mere realisation of unpaid taxes. He must help all, like the barber of Chaplin'sPtomania, and bail out while the going is good and millennial goodwill is still around.Not the easiest of briefs, given Pakistan's problems. But he has to achieve it, if he is not to be dragged through the streets by his own militia, a possibility that some posited as inevitable the day he came to power.
