No easy post-poll scenarios for Musharraf

Islamabad: President Pervez Musharraf's decision to lift emergency rule on December 16 clears the way for a general election that will pass judgment on months of political turmoil in the nuclear-armed state.

Few Pakistanis expect the parliamentary election set for January 8 to be fair, but Musharraf needs a vote with enough credibility to reduce criticism of his use of emergency powers to secure a second five-year term.

Musharraf has promised an election come "hell or high water", as part of the third and final phase of a transition to civilian-led democracy for a nuclear-armed country threatened with instability by growing Islamist militancy.

More vulnerable since he quit the army, the source of his power, Musharraf has gambled his future on whether the parliament that emerges from the vote is hostile or friendly.

The trouble is he's had to allow back the same political leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who left the country virtually bankrupt after a decade of civilian rule in the 1990s.

There are about 160 million people in Pakistan, about half are eligible to vote.