Roll on that villa on the Bosporus. Even though a majority of his countrymen would doubtless prefer him to buy a one-way ticket to retirement in Turkey, whose modern founder he so admires, Pervez Musharraf will on Thursday sign up for a new five-year term as president of Pakistan. This time, however, he will no longer wear a dual hat as chief of army staff. His “doffing” of the uniform, in belated fulfilment of a pledge he has defaulted on repeatedly since 2003, may superficially look consistent with his promise of “real democracy” for a country that has been ruled by the military for more than half its 60-year history. It is, sadly, nothing of the sort.

A man who in his own mind and myth has come to equate his political survival with that of Pakistan itself has secured a new term thanks only to a brutal assault on judicial independence. If the US were serious about promoting democracy in Pakistan – a process it mistakenly subordinates to its need for quick wins in the global “war on terror” – it would recoil at the fact that, beyond a clique of rent-seekers hanging around the barracks, there is no popular constituency for an extension of Mr Musharraf’s presidency. The process by which the former commando chief has procured a new mandate has been a travesty of even the most dimly understood democratic principles.