General Pervez Musharraf finally quit as Pakistan army chief today, trading the post for a second five-year term as president.
President Pervez Musharraf
He passed the baton of command to his hand-picked successor, General Ashfaq Kayani, at a ceremony at army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
Mr Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, is to be sworn in as civilian president tomorrow, having relinquished his position in the one institution that guaranteed his power.
"The system continues, people come and go, everyone has to go, every good thing comes to an end, everything is mortal," a tearful Mr Musharraf told top brass and government leaders at the change-of-command ceremony.
The opposition parties of ex-prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif welcomed the resignation. They are both mulling their participation in a January 8th general election they say can't be fair under emergency rule that Mr Musharraf imposed on November 3rd.
"It is a pleasant moment in the history of Pakistan. Now our army will get a full-time general as its leader," Ms Bhutto told reporters in Karachi.
Mr Musharraf's power and influence in the nuclear-armed country, which is key to the US campaign against al Qaeda and its strategy in neighboring Afghanistan, are bound to be diminished. The question is by how much.
"Naturally, the support of the army, that's what has been vital," said a former army commander, Mirza Aslam Beg, who declined to take power when President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq was killed in a 1988 plane crash.
Mr Musharraf is due to address the nation tomorrow and he could use the occasion to end the emergency.
US President George W. Bush, who had been urging Mr Musharraf to resign as military chief, was pleased by the move.