GMT in Pakistan no longer stands for Greenwich Mean Time, but for General Musharraf Time, a term his opponents have coined to show that no opposition stands in the way of his getting a five-year extension as president in todays referendum.

The joke started on the night of April 6, when the government pushed clocks ahead by an hour under daylight saving time during the six-month summer.

It was also around the same time that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf announced the holding of referendum through which the general, who took power in an coup in 1999, seeks to extend his term at the countrys helm.

Since early April, many of Musharrafs critics have kept their watches at the old time in a bid to defy GMT and to show their opposition to the military leader.

General Musharraf Time resounded again on last Saturday, when the Supreme Court validated the referendum, paving the way for the vote to proceed today.

Dismissing opposition political parties petitions arguing that the vote was unconstitutional, the court accepted the government plea that referendum is being held not under the constitution but under a Provincial Constitutional Order (PCO) issued by Musharraf as army chief. It also affirmed that the country is being governed by the PCO.

As for the consequences of todays referendum and the possibility of Musharraf staying in office longer, the court said: We would not like to go into these questions at this stage and leave the same to be determined at a proper forum at an appropriate time.

Court decision

For long the top courts decision in political cases, as in this case, has been determined by the prevailing political environment.

But although the court validated the referendum, it kept itself open to any future petition that could challenge the extension of Musharrafs term without getting constitutional endorsement from the parliament.

The Supreme Court just took six days to reach the decision. All its nine judges, who gave a unanimous verdict, had taken oaths expressing their allegiance to President Musharraf instead to the Constitution in January 2000.

That was three months after Musharraf took over in a bloodless coup, ousting the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The then Chief Justice, who declined to abdicate his oath to uphold the Constitution in favour of Musharraf, was ousted.

The new Supreme Court team allowed Musharraf to rule for three years until October this year and to change the Constitution.

Reacting to Saturdays verdict, Musharraf, who has been busy holding rallies, called it an encouragement for his government. This order has confirmed my belief that referendum was according to law and the Constitution, he said.

But for Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the main Jamat-e-Islami party and one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court challenge, said the high court had just buried the Constitution.

But despite their legal defeat, a 33-member group of opposition political parties, called the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), vowed to continue their political resistance.

Call for boycott

Kicking off the Go-Musharraf-Go campaign in second largest Lahore city on Saturday, ARD president Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan said that he was taking the matter to the peoples court.

All the major political parties are calling upon the people to boycott the referendum.

The ARD public meeting was the first held since Musharraf took over and banned holding of open political meetings.

Nasrullah said it was regrettable that Musharraf had engaged himself in a four-pronged war with political parties, religious leaders, lawyers and journalists instead of forging unity to tackle various crises facing the country.

The weekend really also underscored the unprecedented unity between the rival parties of former two time prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and NawazSharif, both of whom are living in exile.

Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Sharifs Pakistan Muslim League (PML), the two mainstream parties, have been bitter foes for almost two decades.

But they have been brought together by Musharrafs repeated announcements that he would not let the two former premiers contest the premiership in the October elections because they were corrupt.

Power-hungry

Both Bhutto and Sharif have been convicted by the lower courts for corruption. In the case of Bhutto, who has said she plans to come back to contest elections, the higher court reversed the decision and ordered a re-trial after finding that the judge was biased. Sharif was pardoned and sent to exile in Saudi Arabia.

The power-hungry General has destroyed democracy, democratic institutions, aspirations of the people and endangered the security and stability of the country, said a pre-recorded message by Bhutto played at the weekend rally.

The General had taken oath to safeguard the Constitution and the geographical borders of the country, but he is usurping the rights of his own people and wants to enter politics through the back door by holding a farcical referendum. This is shameful and highly condemnable, she argued.

It was ironic that the General on one hand accused the politicians of causing every ill and on the other himself wanted to become a politician through false means, she said, accusing Musharraf of using tens of millions of dollars in aid money on rallies and advertisements in the media.

PML leader Raja Zafarul Haq said that every dictator desperately needed legitimacy, but the way that Musharraf is acting is in violation of the Constitution.

But if secular political parties are opposing Musharraf for extending his rule through illegitimate means, religious parties are opposing him for pursuing pro-American policies.

Jamiat-e-Ulma chief Maulana Samiul Haq says his group is not against Musharraf, but opposes the American agenda he wants to implement after the referendum.

Most interesting though is silence of many in the media on Saturdays verdict signalling that Tuesdays vote will push through: In a rare occurrence, none of the three leading English dailies has written editorials commenting on it.