I love the percentages a guy who couldn't best bin-Laden in a poll got.
Talk about RIGGED!!!!
Bush will call this a triumph for democracy, just watch.
"Boycotts and Legal Fight Cloud Victory for Musharraf" by CARLOTTA GALL
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 6 — Gen. Pervez Musharraf easily won the election for president on Saturday, but an opposition boycott and pending hearings in the Supreme Court, which still has to decide on his eligibility to run for election in uniform, left him with an incomplete victory.
The vote, by national and provincial assemblies, ended up as a one-man race after other candidates withdrew. All opposition parties refused to take part, and only legislators from the ruling coalition, plus a few independents, voted.
General Musharraf won 98 percent of votes — 671 of the total of 685 ballots cast in the national and provincial assemblies were for him, and 8 were for one of his opponents, Wajihuddin Ahmed, a former Supreme Court judge. Under the electoral college system, General Musharraf got 384 votes of 702, more than 50 percent of the electoral college, according to unofficial calculations.
“This is a very welcome result,” the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, told reporters in Parliament.
General Musharraf had been widely expected to be re-elected as the government coalition holds a majority in all but one provincial assembly.... General Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in October 1999, has always struggled against accusations that his leadership is illegitimate.
Yet he clearly still commands a majority in the elected assemblies, and disquiet among members of the ruling party melted away on election day.
The former minister of tourism, Nilofer Bakhtiar, who had said she would not vote for General Musharraf if he remained in uniform, said his recent promise to the Supreme Court that he would resign his military post after the election had satisfied her. “I am here only because he said he would take off his uniform,” she said Saturday. “He will take the oath in a suit.”
She said she believed that the general would also respect the Supreme Court if it ruled against him. “If the court goes against him, he will quietly quit,” she said. “He has the courage to do that.”
She and other members of Parliament who are women said they supported General Musharraf for his promotion of women. “He has the qualities to make changes in our society,” she said.
Farooq Sattar, a parliamentary leader of the Muttahida National Movement, best known by its Urdu language abbreviation, the M.Q.M., said his party, which is a partner of the governing coalition, was voting for General Musharraf for his stance on terrorism and his macro-economic achievements. “We are voting for the continuity of stability and the democratic process,” he said.
“He is the only candidate, so definitely he will win,” said Aijax Ahmed Chaudhry, a legislator from the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League.
“You cannot say that the legality or popularity is a problem,” he said.
The election passed with barely a hitch. There was only a token protest from demonstrators in the capital, and a walkout by members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the party of a former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. A group of lawyers staged a demonstration outside the assembly in the North-West Frontier Province, burning an effigy of General Musharraf and attacking an armored police vehicle with sticks after it ran over the feet of two senior lawyers.
Divisions within the opposition parties played to General Musharraf’s advantage. Some 80 members of opposition parties resigned their Parliament seats earlier in the week in protest of General Musharraf’s running for re-election while still holding the post of chief of army staff. But Ms. Bhutto’s party, which has been negotiating a power-sharing deal with General Musharraf, chose only to abstain from the vote, preventing an attempt to declare the vote invalid.
Members of the National Assembly and the Senate, including cabinet ministers, gathered in the main parliamentary chamber in the capital at 10 a.m. to answer a roll call and cast ballots in a clear plastic box on the speaker’s table. The unofficial count was announced by 4 p.m.
Supporters of General Musharraf were out celebrating Saturday night with fireworks and banners in front of the Parliament building.
Ms. Bhutto’s party members were present for business on Saturday morning, but they walked out as the chamber was being prepared for the vote. “The whole party boycotted,” Sherry Rehman, a spokeswoman for the party, said. “We had said we are not going to legitimize a process we have opposed in the courts. We do not endorse the election of a military man as president.”
Coming just a day after successfully negotiating an amnesty bill with the government that will allow Ms. Bhutto to return to Pakistan later this month to contest parliamentary elections, her party’s protest appeared to be a token demonstration.
“Only a few hours ago they were negotiating with the president, and now they suddenly remember his uniform,” said the state minister for information, Tariq Azim Khan. “They have selective memory loss.”
A call for a general strike received a lukewarm response. Only two dozen protesters gathered to protest outside the Parliament, shouting, “This election is a fraud,” and, “Go Musharraf, go.”
Asim Sajjad Akhtar, an activist from the People’s Rights Movement, an independent political organization:
“We may not be able to stop this farce from happening, but we can certainly register our opposition. We are against this election because it is totally illegal. It is totally illegitimate. It is totally against the wishes of the people of Pakistan.”
Mr. Akhtar said he believed that a majority of Pakistanis were against military rule even if they did not come out to protest.
I. A. Rahman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said while standing in front of Parliament:
“This election is a farce; it is a bid to perpetuate authoritarian rule All those who are voting and taking part today, they are just trying to prop up an undemocratic regime.”
The provincial assemblies also returned a clear win for General Musharraf, with so few votes going to his opponent Mr. Ahmed that they did not register in the electoral college. In the North-West Frontier Province, where opposition parties hold a majority, the boycott meant only a quarter of the elected members voted."
"Pakistani lawmakers approve new term for Musharraf; Supreme Court to determine legality of vote" by Laura King/Los Angeles Times October 7, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a new five-year presidential term for General Pervez Musharraf yesterday, according to unofficial results, but the legitimacy of the vote has yet to be decided by the Supreme Court.
The lopsided balloting, held simultaneously by Pakistan's national Parliament and four provincial assemblies, was denounced as a sham by Musharraf's opponents. The government praised it as a show of orderly democracy.
The Supreme Court is to rule this month on whether Musharraf is eligible under the constitution to seek a new term in office while serving as head of Pakistan's powerful military, a role he has promised to relinquish only once his victory is sealed.
Opponents still hope to see the 64-year-old leader retroactively disqualified.
That left Musharraf and his allies celebrating an uneasy triumph. "It's the day of the general - apparently," said Adeel Sabir, an anchor on the Dawn television news channel.
Despite an opposition boycott, Musharraf sought to portray the vote as an unqualified show of support.
"A majority, a vast majority, have voted for me," he said in a brief appearance in which he wore civilian clothes rather than his army uniform.
Although the formal outcome is legally on hold, the balloting was seen as a watershed in Musharraf's months-long struggle to remain in power despite an outpouring of public antipathy.
The Pakistani leader is considered a key American ally in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and events here are being watched closely by the Bush administration.
Musharraf has sent troops to battle Islamic militants who have found shelter in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, but that military push is foundering.
Yesterday's vote took place under tight security that included phalanxes of riot police and barbed-wire barricades around the national and provincial assembly buildings.
However, protesters managed to stage small demonstrations near the voting venues.
Outside the regional Parliament in the restive North-West Frontier Province, lawyers in their trademark black suits and starched shirts burned an effigy of the general in uniform and pelted a police armored personnel carrier with rocks. Police fired tear gas to scatter them.
Musharraf had little meaningful competition in the vote. The two other contestants - Wajihuddin Ahmed, representing a lawyers group, and Makhdoom Amin Fahim from the party of exiled Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto - both described their candidacies as largely symbolic.
More than 150 opposition lawmakers left their seats in protest before the balloting, and Bhutto's party abstained, but that made little dent in Musharraf's near-total support.
The president won 671 votes out of the 685 cast in Parliament and the provincial assemblies, officials said.
In the months before the vote, the Pakistani leader's opponents had challenged him in court and staged antigovernment demonstrations. Musharraf responded with a harsh crackdown on opposition activists, the media, and lawyers groups that had led the legal charge against him.
Like much that happens in Pakistani politics, the vote was an exercise in brinkmanship: The Supreme Court ruling putting the results on hold came only a day before the balloting.
Also on the eve of the vote, Musharraf signed into law a measure granting an amnesty on corruption charges for Bhutto, the cornerstone of an emerging power-sharing accord between the two.
The crux of the matter is whether Pakistan, which has spent nearly half its 60-year history under military rule, will emerge from months of turmoil with a civilian government.
Under heavy pressure, Musharraf has pledged to give up the military uniform he is fond of calling his "second skin" - but not until after his reelection is ratified.
Opponents also decried the fact that the election was held by outgoing lawmakers, only weeks before their own mandate expires.
The 2002 elections for provincial and national assemblies were widely believed to have been rigged in favor of Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup.
Ordinary Pakistanis appeared largely indifferent. "It's a selection, not an election," said shopkeeper Mohammed Aslam, shrugging.
By contrast, parliamentary elections to be held by early next year are expected to have more of the trappings of a real campaign.
Bhutto is to return to Pakistan on Oct. 18 and hopes to claim a third term as prime minister, but many in her own party fear that her popularity has been damaged by dealings with Musharraf, whom she has repeatedly called a dictator."
While all this politicking is going on, anything on the war front, shitter media?
"Thirty militants, 6 Pakistani soldiers die in clash" October 7, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Oct 7 (Reuters) - Pakistani soldiers backed by helicopter gunships killed 30 pro-Taliban militants in clashes in which six soldiers also died, a military spokesman said.
The attack in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border came a day after U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf swept the most votes in a presidential election.
Military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad:
"The operation is over but some clashes are still going on in other areas. We have confirmed reports of 30 militants dead and 30 wounded. Six soldiers were killed."
Troops used heavy artillery and helicopter gunships to attack militants positions in mountains after militants ambushed an army convoy near Mir Ali town on Saturday evening, Arshad said.
Residents had said earlier they had seen a military build-up, apparently in preparation for an offensive.
"20 militants, 2 soldiers killed in Pakistan clashes" Islamabad, Oct 7, IRNA
Pakistani security forces killed at least 20 pro-Taliban militants in fighting in North Waziristan on Sunday, the military said, after attacks on security forces, the army said.
Two soldiers were also killed in the fighting, spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told state television.... General Arshad said that six soldiers and 15 militants were also injured in clashes, started in area 10 kilometers south of Mir Ali, a major town in the region, early morning.
He said that militants ambushed convoys of security forces on Friday, saying that improvised devices were used in attacks on security forces. Local TV channels reported that the security forces also used gunship helicopters to bomb positions of the militants.
Major General Waheed Arshad: "We have intercepted communication of the militants that 20 miscreants were killed and 15 others seriously injured."
He denied reports of the fresh kidnapping of 28 soldiers in North Wazirustan and described it as propaganda from the miscreants. A correspondent in the region said the fresh clashes happened a day after two soldiers were killed and several injured in a remote control bomb attack on security forces in Datta Khel area on North Waziristan.
He said the security forces have imposed an undeclared night curfew in Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan, and other towns. The correspondent, requested not be identified, said bodies of 10 Pakistanis, who were killed in Afghanistan while fighting against US-led forces, were brought to North Waziristan on Saturday.
He said officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who had shifted the bodies to the tribal region, were detained by Pakistani authorities but were freed Saturday.
He said that bodies were sent to their families late Saturday."
Gee, where are the reports in my War Dailies?
Why I'm kinda done with 'em!
