Posted on 10/06/2007 7:47:10 AM PDT by jdm
Pervez Musharraf took another giant step towards his transformation from a military dictator to a civilian leader today. He won his election to the presidency with little trouble from his rivals, but he has to await a ruling eleven days from now by the Supreme Court to determine whether he can take office:
Pakistan's military ruler Pervez Musharraf won a landslide victory in a controversial presidential election Saturday but the Supreme Court might yet snatch another five-year term away from him.
Musharraf, a key US ally who seized power in the world's only nuclear-armed Islamic country in a 1999 coup, swept to an easy win over token rivals in the vote by national and provincial parliaments.
But the embattled general must now await a decision by the Supreme Court, which said Friday that the winner cannot be officially declared until at least October 17 while it hears legal challenges.
It wasn't exactly close. Pakistan selects its president by parliamentary vote plus votes in four provincial assemblies. Musharraf won 252 out of 257 votes in Pakistan's parliament, and initial reports from the provinces show similar ratios in those votes. Clearly, Musharraf set the table well for his election, and one has to wonder at the Saddam-level percentage of victory as to exactly what that entailed.
Musharraf doesn't exactly have friends at the Supreme Court. He attempted to fire its Chief Justice over charges of corruption, a handy method of Musharraf's for getting rid of political opponents. The Court and the nation rebelled, which is one of the reasons he reached out to Benazir Bhutto for support -- and why she insisted on his resignation either as president or army chief of staff as the price for it, as well as a pardon for herself.
Still, the court didn't exactly go out of its way to stop Musharraf from transitioning to civilian authority. They ruled in his favor more than once during the last couple of weeks prior to this vote when they could have insisted that he resign his position with the army first. The court's decision to hold its ruling to October 17th could be a measure to ensure that Musharraf complies with the Bhutto amnesty and other promised reforms before giving its blessing. The court will probably prefer to see an imperfect process in the return to civilian rule rather than torpedo it over relatively minor problems and thus extend the military junta.
Bad days ahead for AQ. Musharraff can't keep this dance up....he knows it. Pak Taliban know it......They both know how to survive......
Go Musharraf go!
I can’t believe Obama wants to bomb Pakistan, where we have an ally, but he’ll sit down and talk with our enemies. Traitor.
“Musharraff was never in any real trouble of losing power (at least not to the degree the Western MSM suggested / hoped for).”
It was a myth propagated by Musharraf himself to get the Americans off his back. Of course Americans always thinks they know better.
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