Even generals have to be accountable, and should depart if they cannot perform.
It is an insufferable irony. A nation anticipates that decentralised participatory rule will be delivered by those whose professional ethos is centralised authority and the uncritical pursuit of orders from above. Rather than by taking to the streets in protest, the people of Pakistan voted with their television sets by watching Gen Pervez Musharraf deliver his first speeches.
It is a trying, debilitating time for Pakistani democrats, for democracy is too serious a business to be left to the generals. The labours of love for democracy have to commence right away, and three crucial responsibilities stand out.
Firstly, the democrat has to admit that the coup cannot be condemned as an outright outrage. The unpalatable reality is that during the past 11 years of democracy, the ballast of internal stability that democracy needs to flower had been worn perilously thin. No matter how much optimism one feigned, Pakistan's precarious democracy had little hope of blossoming into a mature system for peacefully negotiating conflicts of interest and of opinion. The 12 October coup was not necessarily a blessing in disguise, but it has to be accepted that it has brought a politically enervating period in Pakistani history to a close. Of course, most Pakistanis have already taken this view for the time being. Even so, Gen Musharraf has to be made to deserve every single moment of this suspension of the constitution.