The resignation of Pervez Musharraf ends the political crisis that has engulfed Pakistan over the past 18 months. But the general’s decision to step down as president – once it was clear all his internal and external support had evaporated – also removes the one force that managed to more or less unify an otherwise fissiparous government in opposition to him. The ruling coalition in Islamabad now has to demonstrate that it is capable of governing.

The portents are not encouraging. The coalition between the Pakistan People’s party (PPP) of the assassinated former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League faction (PML-N) headed by another former premier, Nawaz Sharif, is more a shotgun marriage than a strategic partnership. Now they have ended Mr Musharraf’s thinly disguised military rule, Pakistan’s two traditional parties, populist in rhetoric and feudal in structure, may revert to their normal condition of visceral hostility.