In any case the trigger for the deposition of Sharif himself was his sudden decision to sack the army chief and replace him with the ISI chief, Lt Gen Khawaja Ziauddin, who is known to have become close to Sharif in the last year. Just two weeks earlier Musharraf was given a two-year extension as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee. That move seemed to suggest Sharif and Musharraf had made peace with each other after falling out over Kargil. Had the prime minister and the general in fact agreed to stop blaming each other and to take jointresponsibility for the deeply unpopular withdrawal from Kargil, they may have been able to minimise the political fallout. But there seems to have been too much mistrust between them. The reaction in Pakistan to the dismissal of one more democratically elected prime minister is bound to be ambivalent. On the one hand Pakistanis no doubt cherish the democratic right to choose their own government. On the other they have had too much experience of corrupt, self-serving and incompetent politicians. So Pakistanis will probably be sorry to see the democratic system disrupted but will not waste any tears on Sharif. There cannot be any extenuating circumstances for Musharraf's subversion of Pakistan's constitution. But it must be said that Sharif is responsible for his own downfall. Pakistanis will want to ask how the politician who won the largest popular mandate in history became a monumental autocrat in less than three years and could work with no one -- the courts, the media, provincial government and theopposition. Since 1988 Pakistan's prime ministers have been sacked five times, four times by the president and after Sharif altered the constitution by the army. What this says is there are surely flaws in the system but there are even more severe shortcomings in the political establishment which is expected to work the system.

The political and constitutional crisis in Pakistan is bound to cause deep disquiet everywhere. Pressure is being mounted by western governments and multilateral financial institutions for the restoration of democracy. The generals cannot be immune for long to such pressure at a time when the country is close to bankruptcy. The outside world fears more militarism and more Islamisation of the body politic in Pakistan. Pakistanis themselves will probably be most concerned about how they are going to get good governance. It is obvious that it is not enough to have an elected government. Pakistan needs somehow to find sober, statesmanlike leaders who put the country beforethemselves.