Even if I don't like the military coups, I sympathised with the Mussaraf one because I was fed up with two alternating leaders several times dismised on corruption charges

But really now, I don't know what to think

Here is an shared article by Zia
http://www.gulf-news.com/opinion/columns/world/10156051.html

Most of people said that right now Pakistan is suffering through political and constitutional crisis because of Gen. Musharaf.
There are various issues specially international pressure regarding war against terror is basic pretext to retaining him as a president.

No doubt people got fed up due to his continues rule as a uniform president. In this regard west specially USA is playing major role. USA`s continues backing to Gen. Musharaf and back of Pak Army its very difficult to remove him from presidentship.

An other major issue is politicians who r supporting Gen. Musharaf for their dominance and some opposition parties also supporting him from back door channels to get some place in next government. Specially MMA`s leader Fazal Ul Rehman and PPP`s leader Banazir Bhutto.

Necessary of dominance in future bringing Gen. Musharaf and both political leader closer to each other but from back door diplomacy. Some political parties who are not in favor of military rule. But they don’t have strong influence over masses.

Most of people said that right now Pakistan is suffering through political and constitutional crisis because of Gen. Musharaf.
There are various issues specially international pressure regarding war against terror is basic pretext to retaining him as a president.

No doubt people got fed up due to his continues rule as a uniform president. In this regard west specially USA is playing major role. USA`s continues backing to Gen. Musharaf and back of Pak Army its very difficult to remove him from presidentship.

An other major issue is politicians who r supporting Gen. Musharaf for their dominance and some opposition parties also supporting him from back door channels to get some place in next government. Specially MMA`s leader Fazal Ul Rehman and PPP`s leader Banazir Bhutto.

Necessary of dominance in future bringing Gen. Musharaf and both political leader closer to each other but from back door diplomacy. Some political parties who are not in favor of military rule. But they don’t have strong influence over masses.

So general Musharraff has chosen his successor as top military leader, Lt general Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, but only if he is reelected President of Pakistan

<br><br>Post edited by: Jacques, at: 2007/10/05 00:08

THE split judgment on the petitions challenging Gen. Parvez Musharraf's holding of two offices and also his candidacy for the October 6 presidential election does give him a legal 'go-ahead.' However, it does not give Gen. Musharraf and more importantly the process, through which he seeks re-election, political legitimacy.




Some legitimacy the process has earned through the two additional presidential candidates who have filed their papers for re-election — Justice Wajeehuddin and PPP leader Amin Fahim. Rest he hopes he will get in this very divisive polity, when PPP will decide not to resign from the assemblies.

There are other issues overriding the presidential election. Most importantly how is the Supreme Court judgment received.

It seems it's always politics that is determining the response. The MQM and other coalition partners and the PPP, now in negotiations with the government, have all supported the judgment. The APDM parties are opposing it. And these parties opposing the verdict will now hope to exert pressure on Gen. Musharraf through political means. They will bank on assembly resignations and on massive street protests. Yesterday, when protests by the lawyers and APDM had been organised outside the Election Commission, was the D-day when we all got a taste of the politics to come.

Clearing the mess

Matters have come full circle. The issue is back to where it started from, i.e. politics. Frustrated by the government's bulldozing ahead on many fronts, the opposition took the political mess to the court and wanted the court to clean it up. It wanted Gen. Musharraf to surrender his army position and not to seek re-election as president. Their list of complaints against Gen. Musharraf was unending.

In Friday's judgment the majority in the court essentially said to the opposition look you created the mess, you passed the 17th Amendment and don't expect us to clean the mess. The dissenting judges thought otherwise. The ones rejecting the maintainability of the petitions must also factor in that after all the courts had given two judgments relating to Justice Rafiq Tarar's election as president that created a precedent for the two-year waiver to those holding government jobs. Also as some judges observed during the hearing that it is the politicians who took steps to give Musharraf the constitutional cover for holding two positions. That gives him cover until November 15. That deadline he intends to meet in becoming a civilian president.

Parliament only forum

Obviously conclusion of the majority on the bench was that the current political polarisation and confrontation does not have a legal dimension. That it has a constitutional and political dimension and for that parliament is the forum the contesting politicians must go to.

Many of us would have liked the court to have ruled that Gen. Musharraf remove his uniform before the legislators cast their votes for or against him. Unquestionably an Army Chief getting votes as a president is a caricature of democracy. It's a counter-reality to democracy. Yet fortunately this should alter within a few weeks. He will definitely shed that uniform. And also go for a vote of confidence by the newly-elected assemblies in January 2008.

That is the road that our power scene, now much closer to an accountable scene than ever before, will allow for now. Clearly it's not a radical revolutionary political path we are on. It's also not one that will yield villains or heroes. We are on a gradualist and evolutionary democratic path. Fortunately the changing dynamics of power within Pakistan puts us on an irreversible democratic path.

But in the political fray there is impatience, frustration, rage, search for instant results and deployment of multiple tools to battle the opponents. Hence most of the opposition, minus the PPP, since the post-verdict period, are completely junking the Supreme Court of Pakistan. By contrast earlier they were far more appreciative of the country's apex court. Now they are gunning for it.

Rejectionist position

The blatant attacks on the judges and on the process are disturbing. Simply put it about being negative about situations, developments and decisions that do not support their positions. Similarly the lawyers and their presidential candidate are taking the rejectionist and attacking position vis-a-vis the Supreme Court. This speaks volumes for the maturity and the discipline of the lawyers.

They are abandoning the hallmark of their profession; discipline, uprightness and respect for law and for the country's apex court.

If they disagree with the verdict they should simply say we will take legal recourse to challenge it and also we will, with the political parties take other political measures to stop Gen. Musharraf the army chief from contesting the presidential elections.

In the run-up to the presidential election Pakistan promises to be a hotbed of confrontational political activities; both within and outside of parliament. The onus will now be on those opposing Gen. Musharraf to make winning moves in the political battlefield. Unless any wholly unexpected developments take place, they may not manage any moves that would threaten Musharraf.
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Who, in Pakistan has legitimacy ?

So, general Pervez Musharraf has been relectected as President of Pakistan

Here is the comment of our member Zia

Pakistan’s October 6 presidential elections, the focus of furious political jockeying in the last few weeks, held little suspense. Despite serious challenges to his authority this year, Gen. Pervez Musharraf easily won a new term (BBC) from parliament and provincial assemblies dominated by ruling parties. But the vote was just the first step in a complicated process aimed at sorting out the country’s leadership in the months ahead. That process will involve a Supreme Court ruling on the legality (BBC) of Musharraf's candidacy; the court threatened on the eve of elections to retroactively label it illegal if Musharraf refuses to shed his military leadership role. Also just before the voting began, Musharraf signed a “reconciliation ordinance” that drops corruption charges (CNN) against former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and sets the stage for a power-sharing arrangement with her.

To protect his future interests, the general named a loyalist, Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, the former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy service, to succeed him as the nation’s top military officer. Musharraf’s plan to shed his military role did not come easily, since he derives much of his authority from the post. But in Kiyani, Pakistan gains a skilled commander at a time of demoralization in the army, and a staunch supporter of Musharraf (Newsweek Int'l).

But a Musharraf victory, analysts warn, does not necessarily translate to stability. The army is struggling in its fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, who have aggressively expanded their influence and operations in the tribal and border areas, pushing large parts of the country beyond government control (WashPost). Pakistan’s army, like its population, is deeply divided over the “war on terror,” and analysts see recent incidents of mass army surrenders to smaller groups of militants as a sign that the military will not fight (NewKerala.com) an internal war on behalf of what many of its officers view as Washington’s interests. “This is not our war; Taliban, al-Qaeda are not criminals in our country,” a major from the Pakistani army told the Atlantic. Selig S. Harrison, an Asia expert at the Center for International Policy, warns of a radical “Pashtunistan” (IHT) should events deteriorate further. Others, citing the nuclear-armed country's miserable educational system, its faltering financial institutions (Bloomberg), and an economy which can't keep pace (PDF) with population growth, fear worse.

Unpopular views of the war on terror, already rampant in Pakistan’s ISI, which helped create and fuel the Taliban movement during the 1990s, may be even more widely held among the general public. A new survey (PDF) conducted by Washington-based research institute Terror Free Tomorrow shows that 46 percent of Pakistanis hold a favorable view of Osama Bin Laden. Musharraf and United States remain very unpopular in the country.

Bhutto scores highest in the popularity poll (with 63 percent favorable), and analysts assume (ISN) Washington sees her as the best way to secure a smooth transition to democracy. In this Online Debate, Pakistani analyst Moeed Yusuf argues that, similar to Musharraf, Bhutto has been rallying U.S. support by posing herself as the only hope to save Pakistan from extremists. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters this week the United States regards this election as pivotal in terms of Pakistan’s future but neither he nor other U.S. officials have openly discussed the Musharraf-Bhutto talks.

Still, Pakistanis see Washington’s overt support for Musharraf and the Pakistani army in a different light. Pakistani nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy sums it up in Foreign Policy: “All countries have armies, but in Pakistan things are reversed. Here, it is the Army that has a country.”

A new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that, with the exception of earthquake relief in 2005, most of the $10 billion in American aid to Pakistan since 2001 has been directed towards short-term counterterrorism objectives. The report advocates a redefined U.S. strategy where Washington pursues a broader and diversified relationship with various stakeholders including civil society and the private sector in Pakistan.

Despite his success in winning a majority of votes on 6 October 2007 election, Pakistan's president general Pervez Musharraf faces a host of challenges both at home and abroad
http://www.asianewsnet.net/news.php?aid=12698

A majority of people in Pakistan think that the country is heading in a wrong direction and the present government does not deserve to be re-elected because of its poor performance.

According to a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) of the US Republican Party and released here, 56 per cent of the people said their economic condition had worsened over the past one year and 65 per cent said they felt less secure today.

Another interesting finding of the survey is that a majority of respondents were opposed to a deal between President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

The poll was conducted between August 29 and September 13 and the randomly selected sample consisted of 4,009 men and women from 256 rural and 144 urban areas of 60 districts in the four provinces.

The survey says: “As the national mood continues to sour, President Musharraf continues to bear the brunt of this voter dissatisfaction and his approval rating has dropped to an all-time low of 21 per cent, from a high of 63 per cent in September 2006.”

In addition to declining approval ratings, Gen Musharraf’s points fell in several other categories as well. The percentage of voters saying that President Musharraf should resign increased by seven points to 70 and his favourability rating dropped by 13 points to 22. Further, when asked to name the best leader for Pakistan, Gen Musharraf dropped to third place, behind both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

3 NOVEMBER 2007
Pakistan president General Musharraf imposes emergency rule and suspends the country’s constitution, provoking huge demonstrations and arrests http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7076670.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7077136.stm