Pak Opposition Decries Farce Polls

"Without lifting the state of emergency and restoring the constitution, elections will be a farce and an attempt to hoodwink the international community," Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the President of the powerful six-party religious alliance, Muttehida Majlis-e-Amal, told IslamOnline.net over the phone from his residence in the northeastern city of Lahore, where he is under house arrest.

Embattled President General Pervez Musharraf announced on Sunday, November 11, that elections will be held before January 9 but the emergency rule he imposed earlier last week would not be lifted before that.

He also insisted that supreme and high court judges who refused to legitimize the emergency are "gone, they are no more the judges."

"The people of Pakistan will never accept any elections under emergency rule," two-time former premier Nawaz Sharif told his Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) party workers from his exile.

"This will not be elections, but selection," said Sharif, who was prevented from retuning to Pakistan, despite a Supreme Court ruling in his favor, and thrown into a plane to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

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