At this stage of the game one must ask why the nation of Pakistan is what it is. After all, it is the people who make up a nation, so as a nation, right now, Pakistani has to be highly flawed, which indicates that its people are flawed as are the leaderships they vote in. Enough has been said about the 'undesirables'. We do not need any further depressing shaming details to further dampen us. But there are two main players on the national stage, one who has galvanised the legal community for two years (full marks to it for its tenacity and stamina) and the other is the man on the sidelines upon which much rests. In January 2000, the then plain Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, a judge in the Balochistan High Court was one of the first judges to take an oath under Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf's prescribed PCO. This allowed him to be elevated to the Supreme Court to fill one of the vacancies left by the 11 judges who had resigned in protest at taking this oath. On May 13 2000, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was one of 12 Supreme Court judges who validated the military coup of General Pervez Musharraf. They ruled that the removal of the elected government of Nawaz Sharif was legal on the basis of our old friend, the Doctrine of Necessity. In June 2001, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was one of the two judges who visited the presidency house to convince the then President Rafiq Tarrar to resign, and make way for General Pervez Musharraf to assume that office. On April 13, 2005, in the case of the 17th amendment and the presidential uniform, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was one of five Supreme Court judges who dismissed all petitions challenging President Musharraf's constitutional amendments. In a wide ranging judgement they declared that the Legal Framework Order instituted by General Musharraf after his suspension of the constitution, the 17th amendment which gave this constitutional backing, and the two offices bill which allowed Musharraf to retain his military uniform whilst being president were all legal. On March 9, 2007, he was told that a reference against him had been prepared and was to be sent to the Supreme Judicial Council. The president suggested that he resign however CJ Iftikhar refused. The consequences are with us today. Waiting, just off stage, is, in realistic terms, the most powerful man in the country. Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani commands the largest, most disciplined and richest entity of the country. It has been suggested that given the circumstances, he may have no option but to act, probably in General Waheed Kakar style as a complete takeover may not be acceptable to the Americans. As for the nation, it is divided as never before. The Taliban have their strongholds way up north - no 'way up' actually as Swat is a three-hour drive from the capital. Apart from the two nations born of the dual education system there is the provincial divide and the sectarian divide - the Sunnis and Shias killing each other is largely ignored. Other matters take precedence over the mere loss of life from sectarian strife. Why and how is it that Pakistanis are reluctant to admit that they are Pakistanis? Most Pakistanis when asked where they come from will name their province and then hurriedly go on to stress that their ancestry does not hail from what is now Pakistan but were originally either Arabs, Persians, Turks, Central Asians, Vanuatans, Icelanders - anything but an admittance that their origins lie in the soil of either India or Pakistan. It is as if it is infra dig to admit that one's forefathers inhabited the subcontinent. Unfortunately, the national language we speak is a degraded form of Urdu. Watching the numerous national television channels bequeathed to us by the departed Pervez Musharraf one must wonder why all of those who come on air to express themselves in Urdu cannot do just that. What is the necessity for deliberately distorting the Urdu they speak by inserting English words and phrases? Their corrupt and vandalised Urdu displays either an abysmally low knowledge of the language or the feeling that it is degrading to speak it without projecting one's knowledge (also too often abysmal) of the English language. Yes, a revolution is needed - in the national mindset. The writer is a freelance columnist