Pakistan's opposition parties capitulate to Musharraf and Bush

These elections are a sham, meant to frustrate, not further, the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people. Their aim is to shore up the rule of Pervez Musharraf, the military strongman and autocrat who has now recast himself as a civilian president. Even more fundamentally, they are meant to perpetuate a political system in which the military and its longtime Washington sponsors dominate decision-making, and to sustain a grossly unequal social order in which more than two-thirds of the country must eke out their existence on less than $2 US per day.

The Musharraf regime has prepared for the elections by suspending fundamental constitutional rights for the past six weeks, under a so-called Provisional Constitution Order, and by imposing a draconian regime of press censorship and mass arrests and beatings of government opponents.

The judiciary has been purged of elements deemed unreliable by the military and their political cronies and they have re-staffed the Supreme Court with judges whose principal qualification was their willingness to give a judicial stamp of approval to Musharraf’s unconstitutional October “re-election” as president and his patently illegal Provisional Constitution Order.

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