Court dismisses challenges to Musharraf

Musharraf continues to make a mockery out of any sense of democratic norm or of judicial impartiality with his new hand picked Supreme Court swiftly dismissing five challenges to his controversial re-election this year which saw him elected by 98% of the votes cast.

As I said at the time:

Perhaps, if one had recently landed from Mars, one could honestly claim that one had just witnessed a free and fair election, but all of the rest of us know a sham when we see one.

So we watch Musharraf romp home with a landslide of 98%, the kind of election result that we used to routinely condemn as evidence of illegality when it was won by the likes of Saddam Hussein.

But this is "our" man. So let's celebrate the beauty that is democracy!

Now Musharraf's hand picked Supreme Court is being used to see off any challenges to his faux election whilst the country's chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who was due to rule on whether or not the election was legal shortly before Musharraf declared a state of emergency, remains under house arrest until Musharraf gets his election declared legal.

Yesterday Chaudhry and seven other independent-minded judges remained under house arrest, and the replacement bench clearly signalled its loyalties. In little more than an hour five anti-Musharraf petitions were quashed and lawyers for his opponents given hostile treatment.

The 10-judge bench headed by the new chief justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar, threatened to jail one lawyer and remove his law licence if he persisted with a challenge to the president.

Several senior lawyers involved in the case, such as bar council president Aitzaz Ahsan, were not present because they had already been jailed.

If, as seems likely, Thursday's court decision goes in his favour, Musharraf will hand control of the nuclear-armed military to his deputy, former spy chief Lt Gen Ashfaq Kiyani.

Bush continues to have faith in Musharraf, although it is unclear how much faith either man can be said to have in the democratic process after watching this debacle being played out in front of us.

Musharraf, however, continues to portray what he has done as almost heroic and, certainly, with the best interests of Pakistan always at the forefront of his mind.

Faced with intense international criticism, an often strained looking Musharraf has become defensive. "I took this decision in the best interest of Pakistan," he said at a bridge-opening ceremony in Karachi on Sunday.

"I could have said thank you and walked away. But this was not the right approach because I cannot watch this country go down in front of me."

So you see, this is not a monomaniacal military dictator, this is a man of sacrifice, doing what he is doing for the greater good of Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto is making a similar point to the one I made the other day:

"If the United States gives him $10bn (£5bn) and does not get him to do what it wants, how is it going to expect us to make him do what he does not want to do," said Benazir Bhutto yesterday.

Negroponte's request that Musharraf suspend his state of emergency has been totally ignored, but the US will not cut off funding to the military dictator as long as he continues to do their bidding in the war on terror.

Nor does Musharraf even believe that the US is really that serious when they complain about what he has done. He says Washington is privately "200 per cent" more supportive of him than in its public statements.

"They show concern on the democratic front, they show concern over my uniform, but they are totally onboard on what we are doing on the terrorist front. They think what we are doing is the right directions." "They are liking me because we are fighting terrorism together."

And therein lies the rub. No matter what light condemnation Bush issues regarding this blatant usurping of the democratic process, the truth is that Musharraf is Bush's man and Bush will do nothing that may see his man removed from power.

As we recently witnessed in Gaza and the West Bank, Bush only favours democracy when it delivers results that he agrees with. As long as Musharraf continues to pursue a western policy - which is hated by many of his electorate and accounts for much of his unpopularity - Bush doesn't care how he is elected.

For Bush to still be supporting Musharraf as he goes through this electoral charade, reveals Bush's professed wish to export democracy as some kind of sick joke.

Note the difference between Dana Perino's claims of impotency when it comes to Pakistan, as opposed to the calls for sanctions against Iran when it fails to do what the US demands:

Though U.S. President Bush is urging his Pakistani counterpart to lift emergency rule, there's not much else that can be done, the White House admitted Monday.

The idea of withdrawing funding from a military dictator who has just pulled off his second military coup is simply unthinkable. "There's not much else that can be done", pines Perino. Does anyone seriously buy that piece of bunkum?

Click title for full article.

Tags: Bush, Musharraf, Pakistan, Bhutto, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry