“I would like to bow my head and apologize for the worry I have caused my fellow citizens,” Yoon Suk Yeol said Saturday, in a televised address to South Koreans.

Yoon was facing an impeachment motion in connection with a botched attempt to institute military rule in what, until this week anyway, was the quintessential example of democracy gone right in the developing world.

This should go without saying, but just in case: Yoon shouldn’t get a pass. His apology, to the extent it was sincere, is a nice sentiment, but it’s not as if he got tipsy and embarrassed himself at a G20 dinner. The man declared martial law and, however briefly, banned political activity and seized control of the South Korean media. Oh, and he sent 300 heavily-armed troops to the legislature.

Apparently, everyone’s supposed to forgive and forget because the troops left without arresting (or shooting) any lawmakers, and because Yoon lifted martial law after the 190 parliamentarians who managed to make it inside the National Assembly voted unanimously to overturn his decision. But… well, no. Just no. You don’t get to trial balloon a military dictatorship and then walk away like nothing happened when you get cold feet.

Yoon explained himself on Saturday as desperate, not despotic. “This declaration of martial law was born out of desperation… but it has caused anxiety to my fellow citizens who must have been greatly surprised.” Yes, Mr. Yoon, South Koreans were in fact “greatly surprised” when, all of a sudden, their president suggested a return to the days of pre-democratic military government citing, among other things, a North Korean conspiracy.

I don’t doubt Yoon’s sorry. Everyone’s sorry when they do something stupid and it doesn’t work out. The question’s whether Yoon’s sorry because his power grab flopped or whether he’s sorry for trying to overthrow the country’s democracy in the first place. (My guess is it’s a little bit of both.)

Obviously, Yoon’s televised address on Saturday was an attempt to give his allies air cover to kill the impeachment motion. And it worked. Pretty much everyone from his ruling party ended up boycotting the vote. South Korea’s unicameral legislative body has 300 members. A two-thirds majority’s necessary to validate an impeachment bid, which meant the opposition needed, by my count, eight defections. They didn’t get them.

As a bonus, Yoon’s People Power Party shot down legislation that would’ve appointed a special counsel to look into allegations that his wife manipulated stocks and accepted a Dior clutch improperly. (To be fair, I would’ve taken the Dior bag too, although I wouldn’t have manipulated the stocks, allegedly or otherwise.)

This doesn’t mean Yoon will finish his term. He almost surely won’t. PPP leader Han Dong-hoon indicated he viewed Yoon’s tenure as untenable, and Yoon himself alluded to the prospect of being forced out by his own party, albeit not via impeachment proceedings. “I will entrust my party with measures related to my term in office,” he said.

Whatever happens to Yoon, we should be clear: Every South Korean lawmaker had a duty to impeach this idiot posthaste. As noted above, South Korea’s held up by the West as a paragon of how things can turn out if you embrace democracy. Yoon tried to throw it all away overnight, and in the process he tarnished the country’s reputation among its backers, including Washington. That’s wholly (wildly) unacceptable.

Bottom line: The fact that Yoon’s party didn’t stand with the opposition on Saturday was yet another example of lawmakers in ostensible democracies putting partisanship over principle. Par for the Bedminster course these days, unfortunately.