Eight years ago Nawaz Sharif was removed from power in Pakistan after denying landing rights to an airliner, circling over Karachi, carrying the army general who has ruled the country ever since. Last night Mr Sharif left London to return to Pakistan for the first time since 2000, ignoring pleas from Saudi Arabia and Lebanon to uphold a deal they claim to have brokered for him to stay in exile for ten years. Mr Sharif explained his decision to go with characteristic hubris: “My country needs me.” It does not. His record as a leader, tarnished by scandal and ineptitude, hardly qualifies him as a national saviour. What Pakistan needs is a respite from violence on its streets and the orderly transition to democracy that President Musharraf has long-since promised. Whether Mr Sharif has a role in bringing this about is secondary – and doubtful.

Few would argue that much has changed in Pakistan in Mr Sharif’s absence, and in particular in the past year. General Musharraf has presided over respectable economic growth, restrained the Army’s more draconian impulses and taken steps towards lowering tension with India in Kashmir. But he has made no significant moves towards returning his country to democracy, disenfranchising the moderate middle class on which its future depends. At the same time his erratic approach to dealing with religious extremism – withdrawing troops from Waziristan last year, then using them to take control of the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July – has succeeded only in unifying the voices of radical Islam against him and deepening his own isolation.

This is a crisis of General Musharraf’s making. Yet his plan to end it is not plausible. He seeks a second presidential term to be rubber-stamped by Pakistan’s current national and provincial assemblies, and a deal with Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) aimed at securing confirmation of his extended tenure in power by new assemblies sworn in after elections due in the next six weeks. Ms Bhutto has demanded that he leave the Army as the price of such a deal. General Musharraf has refused. This is a strategy based on fear. He may be right to fear that his own grip on power would slacken should he “doff the uniform”, but he is wrong to assume – and to insist to Western governments – that this would necessarily be a recipe for unrest and inertia in the fight against extremism.

Pakistan’s real power struggle is not between Mr Musharraf and his exiled rivals but between a minority of extremists, some highly placed in the military, and a moderate majority represented in recent clashes by the Supreme Court. It was the court that reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in July in defiance of the President’s attempt to remove him from office, and the court that cleared the way last month for Mr Sharif’s return. The same court must now ensure that the corruption cases reopened against Mr Sharif last week are not overwhelmed by politics. If nothing else, he deserves due process.

Bhutto was killed by bomb blast

The team from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command have backed the claim that Benazir Bhutto was not shot

Multimedia

• Pictures: death of Benazir Bhutto

• Pictures: Pakistan

BACKGROUND

• Pakistan in turmoil as ‘martial law’ imposed

• Bhutto escapes as bombers kill 126

• Timeline: Pakistan's period of turmoil

• The man out to oust a President

• Internal crisis gives Pakistan reason for hope

The same is true of Ms Bhutto, due to announce her return later this month. Like Mr Sharif, her incompetence is proven even if her alleged corruption is not. But between them they command the loyalty of a majority of Pakistanis, who deserve better from their leaders. It is time for a grand, democratic coalition. Petty politics is the last thing their country needs.