General Musharraf and Engineered Democracy

The fact that the present government will continue most, if not all of the Musharraf government’s policies, bears testimony to the fact that Musharraf wanted continuity, and he needed a figure like Jamali to step into the setup that he so created by political engineering.

Powers granted to the President to dissolve the National Assembly is the negation of the principal of parliamentary sovereignty. By installing the Chief Justice of his own choice, the General had already started with the process of engineered democracy, thus ensuring that the question of legitimacy which haunts every dictator is put to rest. The former Law Minister Khalid Ranjha claimed to have incorporated the LFO into the 1973 Constitution, thus making the elections and the elected Parliament controversial. Pervez Musharraf was sworn in as president by the chief justice without following the original constitutional requirement of the president being elected by the Parliament.

General Musharraf engineered the election process in such a way that a hung parliament came into being. “The military claimed that nearly 70 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, 98 percent in favor of Musharraf, the results of the fraudulent polling process seem to have done more to betray the general's guilty conscience than to cement his claim to power. The status of General Musharraf as the legitimate President of the country. Law Minister Khalid Ranjha and Presiding Officer for the Oath-Taking Ceremony Ilahi Bux Soomro have already issued contrasting statements about this. The judiciary was made to re-take the oath under the PCO, and Justice Irshad Hassan Khan was made the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, following the refusal of the senior judges of the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Ajmal Mian, to retake the oath under the PCO.

The assumption of powers by President Musharraf to dissolve the future parliament has been interpreted as a threat to future elected members.