Court opens options for Musharraf

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Karachi examines what happens next as Pakistan's Supreme Court clears the way for Gen Musharraf to be president for a second term.

Will Gen Musharraf keep his promise to resign as head of the army?

Pakistan's Supreme Court has now dismissed all the petitions challenging Gen Pervez Musharraf's right to become president again.

The next logical step should be for the Election Commission to formally declare him as winner of October's poll and for him to quit as army chief and be sworn in as president for another term.

Gen Musharraf won the October poll by a huge majority after most of the opposition boycotted or abstained in the national and provincial assemblies that choose the president.

Before October's vote, Gen Musharraf's lawyers promised the Supreme Court that he would quit as army chief before being sworn in as president again.

However, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since October.

Protests crushed

To begin with, the court that threw out the challenges to his candidature is not the same as the far more independent-minded one that was hearing the cases until 3 November.

Benazir Bhutto faces a test of her political ingenuity

On that date, Gen Musharraf imposed emergency rule, suspended the constitution and sacked more than half the judges of the higher judiciary.

Under the justification of the emergency, protests by lawyers and political parties were brutally crushed. Thousands of activists were thrown in jails where they remain.

President Musharraf's appointment of a group of politicians who are widely seen as partisan to form the caretaker government for the upcoming parliamentary election has sparked fears of election fraud.

Emergency rule has snapped the year-long reconciliation talks between Gen Musharraf and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, chief of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the country's largest.

It also sparked concerns in the US and the UK, both of which considered these talks as crucial to Pakistan's transition to democracy and its effective campaign against Islamic militancy.

Will the Supreme Court rulings serve as a trigger to restore the process of reconciliation between Gen Musharraf and Ms Bhutto?

Calming the West

The outcome appears to depend on two things; whether Gen Musharraf actually quits the army and whether he restores the constitution and the judiciary.

Ms Bhutto still holds the key to the kind of opposition Gen Musharraf is likely face in the run up to the January elections and beyond

In the first case, the general view is that he will probably quit his army post as soon as the Election Commission has formally declared him winner of the October vote.

This is because Gen Musharraf badly needs to offer up something to the Western powers that have been pressuring him to end emergency rule.

Analysts say he may even lift emergency rule ahead of elections, due in the second week of January.

This would score points with Western powers. But it could also influence the domestic environment by dividing the opposition which is now threatening an election boycott and a united front if the constitution is not restored.

Unacceptable

But standing down as army chief and ending emergency rule may not be enough to "divide and rule" domestic opposition.

Can Gen Musharraf keep the opposition divided?

Ms Bhutto and other opposition leaders are clear that they regard the caretaker government as biased and unacceptable.

There are also outstanding issues regarding the neutrality of the Election Commission, and the methods of voting and counting the votes which opposition parties are unhappy about.

These arrangements have been handled by the government unilaterally, without inviting inputs from the opposition.

Observers believe the government is unlikely to either alter the composition of the caretaker government or invite the opposition for belated consensus building on electoral procedures.

So where does that leave Ms Bhutto?

Minimum understanding?

Ms Bhutto still holds the key to the kind of opposition Gen Musharraf is likely face in the run up to the January elections and beyond.

Despite her denunciations of Gen Musharraf in recent days, she could still come to some kind of minimum understanding with him about the political set-up once the emergency is lifted and take her chances at the hustings in the January polls.

Alternatively, she can continue to insist on a role for the opposition both in framing (or re-framing) the caretaker government and determining how to make sure Pakistan has free and transparent elections in January.

The first option would damage Ms Bhutto's electoral interests as she would be up against an administration determined to cut her party's electoral performance to a minimum, as it has repeatedly done in the past.

The second option, it is feared, would simply lead to a political deadlock.

Whatever Ms Bhutto decides, her political ingenuity will be greatly tested in the coming days and weeks.