The departure of Pervez Musharraf as president of Pakistan now looks only a matter of time. Such is the clamour for him to go that residual support for him has collapsed. The army, which declined to rig last February’s election in his favour, has now taken its distance. But that does not mean it will stand by and watch General Musharraf, its former chief of staff, humiliated by parliamentary impeachment. The ruling coalition must not overplay its hand because Pakistan cannot afford another layer of crisis.

Mr Musharraf bears a heavy responsibility for the mess in which Pakistan finds itself. When he took power in a bloodless coup in 1999 his declared aim was to end decades of civilian and military misrule that had bankrupted the country and buckled its institutions. He did, at first, restore the country’s finances. But he also sought to institutionalise his supremacy, which he seemed to see as consubstantial with the national interest. In this, he had the full backing of the Bush administration that, in its search for allies against al-Qaeda after 9/11, came to equate Pakistan with the general’s thinly disguised dictatorship.