The moment and the manner by which Pervez Musharraf has introduced emergency rule in Pakistan have been a surprise, but the introduction itself is surely not. It has been obvious for many months that the General-turned-President faced a choice between striking a deal with one of his erstwhile rivals, logically Benazir Bhutto, and maintaining his position by that means or suspending the Constitution. The formula that he has adopted finally implies that he would like to keep both of these options open.

This is a partial rather than an absolute crack-down, aimed mainly at the Supreme Court and its sympathisers. The President has also offered a confusing ambiguity about the national elections, which are supposed to be held in January. He has not yet cancelled this contest indefinitely but is not committed to conducting it either. He insisted in his televised address that he had acted to save his original masterplan to restore democracy but seemed to believe that it would require transparently undemocratic means for him to be able to achieve that end.

It is this by which the President and his strategy ultimately will be judged. Coups of one sort or another are not, alas, all that unusual in Pakistani politics. The 60-year history of the country has been peppered with them. It has been the tragedy of that nation that it has veered between civilian rule, which has had the asset of legitimacy but the liability of corruption, and military regimes that have lacked legitimacy but been relatively clean.

If Pakistan is to fulfil its considerable potential then it has to break out of that cycle. The President is far too smart a man not to realise that reliable democracy rather than benign dictatorship has to be the model that he must champion. His personal legacy depends on the success he has in ushering in an era of normal yet stable party politics. The acid test for General Musharraf, therefore, is whether the current crisis proves to be one that is limited to his struggle with the judiciary or extends much wider. Ejecting a Supreme Court Justice is one thing. Rejecting national assembly elections is another, although a delay of one or two months in that ballot would not be a catastrophe provided that when a poll is held it reflects the will of the electorate.

Putting back the process by one or two years, as some in the Pakistani military will now favour, would cast doubt on whether the President is remotely sincere is his stated intentions. He has to act with a light touch on his partisan opponents, show some restraint to the courts, which he essentially usurped on Saturday, and maintain a dialogue with Ms Bhutto and others who ultimately will have to be part of Pakistan’s political future.

This is also the message that the United States and Britain should be sending. It would be ridiculous to ostracise the President when he remains the figure, even if diminished and tarnished, who is most sympathetic to the principal objectives of the outside world in his region and who, if minded to steer a path towards political modernisation in his country, is best placed to manage that task. This is a desperate move but Pakistan is a fairly desperate nation, a nuclear power often on the verge of failed state status.

There is no doubt that Pakistan is in peril as much because of its feeble institutions as the extremists who exploit their weaknesses. In the end, only robust democracy can be the answer to the country’s many difficulties.