With the SC granting bail to Pervez Musharraf in the Akbar Bugti case, the legal thicket that the former president and army chief found himself in upon his return to Pakistan continues to clear, presumably opening a path to his exit from Pakistan for a second time. Unhappily, though perhaps predictably, the legal thicket Mr Musharraf had been dragged into had little to do with the central problem of his rule: that it was illegitimate from the very beginning. Instead, the former military strongman has been pursued on other fronts: the dismissal of judges in November 2007; the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; the Lal Masjid episode; and the Akbar Bugti death. To be sure, each of those episodes was deeply troublesome and created a host of political and security problems from which the country is still struggling to recover. But legal liability and culpability is a separate matter from disastrous decisions with devastating consequences.

Seen from the perspective of what best strengthens the democratic and constitutional system in Pakistan, it was Mr Musharraf’s overthrow of an elected government in 1999 for which he most obviously ought to stand trial. Of course, while the former army chief may have been the face of the new regime in 1999, there were many others who both abetted his takeover and validated his rule. Those other individuals too have much to answer for. So why has Mr Musharraf so far escaped having to answer the most obvious of charges? The answer appears to lie in a combination of the old order still having much influence and the new, democratic order being unable to muster the courage or conviction to take up the past that truly matters. Since Mr Musharraf’s exit in 2008, the country has gone some way in shutting the door on extra-constitutional takeovers. But whatever the practice of continuity and the cleaned-up text of the Constitution may offer, it would send a powerful message to have the protagonists of a military takeover held to account in a court of law. Sadly, that chance appears to have been squandered.