For over three quarters of a century, Pakistanis have pinned their hopes on the promise of a dignified life. They have placed those hopes in successive governments and in saviours of every stripe - whether emerging from the opposition or from the general public - all of whom have won the support of a desperate and repeatedly betrayed populace. Despite repeated betrayals of hope, people continued to wonder whether the successive regimes will finally deliver a dignified life and a viable future. Unsurprisingly, none did. Instead, each new leader, each self-proclaimed saviour, and each fresh promise only deepened the public's misery.

Notwithstanding repeated betrayals, hope survives - not because it has escaped being repeatedly stabbed in the back, but because, for a complicit population, hope rather than political agency remains the only thing to which it can attach its future. In doing so, people fail to recognise what Nietzsche suggested: hope is often the worst evil, an opiate that prolongs suffering. Today, three messianic hopes dominate public........

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