Isn’t it somehow pathetic when a perfectly good tin-pot dictator develops a twisted need for wearing the entirely unconvincing fig leaf of “democracy”? Why couldn’t he just have embraced the standard “I, who have no lust for power, have reluctantly been forced to temporarily take over my country for the good of the people”, and left it at that? Why this pathological need to pretend to be presiding over a democracy? And to have everyone around him pretend to buy into this pretence?

I am referring, of course, to the supremely ridiculous Pervez Musharraf.

He’s just presided over what the self-respecting members of the media can’t bring themselves to call an election. So BBC gives us a headline with quotation marks: Musharraf ‘wins presidency vote’. And the story is consistent with the headline:

Gen Musharraf’s supporters dominate the assemblies, thanks to elections five years ago which were widely condemned as rigged.

As expected, he won by a landslide.

Chief Election Commissioner Qazi Muhammad Farooq told the National Assembly that Gen Musharraf had won 252 of 257 votes cast in the upper and lower houses.

One Wajihuddin Ahmed (a former Supreme Court judge) received two votes, and three votes were discredited.

Then WaPo has a story which minces no words either:

Despite weeks of turmoil over the vote, the poll itself is a formality. National and provincial assemblies that elect the president, produced in rigged 2002 elections, are packed with Musharraf supporters.

That’s when I turned to CNN. Imagine my surprise at seeing a headline with quotation marks: Musharraf ‘elected to third term’. “CNN?”, I asked myself. But my admiration was groundless. The story contains not a single reference, direct or indirect, to the farcical nature of the event Musharraf has just staged. The quotations are there only because the results of the alleged election will not be known till after October 17, when Pakistan’s Supreme Court will rule whether Musharraf was actually qualified to run.

You’re probably wondering what happens if they rule against him. Here’s what will actually happen: Musharraf will abandon his fig leaf and remain President anyway. But maybe I’m too cynical. Maybe Musharraf will abide by the Supreme Court decision. Well:

If the court rules Musharraf is ineligible to hold office as president the second runner-up will take office instead, as the constitution stipulates.

Just as their first floor is our second floor, apparently “second runner-up” means the guy who came in second. Yes, one Wajihuddin Ahmed who received two votes out of 257 would become the next democratically elected President of Pakistan.

Always possible, though, that Musharraf will argue: “The rightful President is ‘discredited’ (three votes, remember?), and right now there’s nobody more discredited then me.” (Assuming, of course, that the constitution of Pakistan — yes, they do have a constitution, still; heck, so do we! — does not allow the office to be held concurrently by the President of the U.S.)