For an insight into why Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf wants to cling to power, his stated leadership models say it all - Napoleon Bonaparte and Richard Nixon. General has employed the French emperor's soldierly plain-speaking and the late US president's reliance on realpolitik in equal measure since he seized power without firing a shot on October 12, 1999.
Since then he has portrayed himself as his nuclear-armed nation's saviour from itself and, since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, as the world's bulwark against the menace of al Qaeda.
Musharraf's critics charge that after failing to restore full democracy and presiding over eight years of military rule, he has fallen to the dictator's disease of thinking himself indispensable.
Talat Masood, a former general-turned-political analyst, said: "All dictators eventually think that they are the saviour, that without them the state will collapse and that they are destined to play that role."
Musharraf has won praise for trying to tackle extremism and presiding over record growth that has made Pakistan one of the world's fastest expanding economies.
He has also encouraged an exponential increase in electronic and other media. And he has undeniably shown courage in what has been dubbed the world's most dangerous job, in which he has escaped at least three assassination attempts by Osama bin Laden's extremist network.
Talking about the bids to kill him on his official website, Musharraf says: "I call myself 'Lucky'. Napoleon had said, besides all qualities a leader has to be lucky to succeed. Therefore, I must succeed." Musharraf, a former commando, has also referred to Napoleon in several interviews.
But Masood said Musharraf's insistence he should stay in office to free his country's 160 million people from Islamic militancy was a misconception.
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