Bush, Bhutto accomplices in Pakistan's sham presidential election!

Pakistan’s Supreme Court issued a judgment Friday that gives a provisional judicial stamp of approval for the sham presidential election the country’s military regime is to stage today with the aim of making General Pervez Musharraf Pakistan’s president till the fall of 2012.

But while the court ruled that the election, which patently violates both the spirit and letter of the constitution, can proceed, it reserved judgment on whether Musharraf is legally entitled to be a presidential candidate and instructed the election commission not to proclaim Musharraf elected till after it rules on the matter.

“The bench has unanimously resolved and directed that the election process should proceed,” announced Justice Javed Iqbal. “... But final notification of the returning candidate will not be issued until the decision of the issue for this petition for which the process is to begin October 17.”

The ruling was a setback for Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in October 1999 and has been a pivotal and much-lauded ally of the Bush administration in its wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pakistan’s President and Chief of Armed Services had been looking to the Pakistani judiciary, which has a long and sordid record of sanctioning military rule, to give both Saturday’s stage-managed presidential election and his candidacy its seal of approval .

Nevertheless, Musharraf can take considerable comfort in Friday’s ruling. The presidential election is to proceed on the timetable and in the flagrantly unconstitutional manner dictated by the military government, thereby lending the sham election a wholly unwarranted air of legitimacy. The Attorney-General, meanwhile, has observed that nothing prevents the Election Commission from releasing “provisional” results.

Had the court ordered the election delayed pending its final ruling, the parliamentary opposition would have been able to make good on its threat to force the dissolution of the North-West Frontier Province legislature, thereby further highlighting the election’s illegitimacy and illegality. (Under the Pakistani constitution, the president—whose powers have been greatly expanded during Musharraf’s authoritarian rule—is elected indirectly, by an electoral college made up of the sitting members of the national and four provincial parliaments.)