THE Supreme Court yesterday upheld the dismissal of former Pakistani prime minister Ms Benazir Bhutto, clearing the way for elections that pollsters say she will lose.
"There is enough material to establish corruption, nepotism and misrule," Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah said at the end of a hearing which began on January 13th into Ms Bhutto's appeal against her dismissal by President Farooq Leghari.
"We uphold the order," he said of Mr Leghari's November 5th dismissal of Ms Bhutto on a range of charges. She denies them all.
Police clashed with Bhutto supporters outside the court in Islamabad soon after the verdict was announced. Witnesses said police baton charged stone throwing demonstrators.
The verdict means national and provincial assembly elections will go ahead on Monday as scheduled, with Ms Bhutto's arch foe, former prime minister Mr Nawaz Shariff, of the PML, the Pakistan Muslim League, a clear front runner. A party spokesman said the PML was happy with the verdict.
The latest opinion poll said 40 per cent of its 2,000 respondents across the country planned to vote for the PML, while just 20 per cent planned to vote for Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Ms Bhutto said the Supreme Court verdict was part of a plot to drive her from politics.
"They can't eliminate us politically, they want to eliminate us judicially," Ms Bhutto told a news conference at her home in Karachi. She predicted the verdict would be followed by a crackdown on the PPP.
"Now they will form false murder charges against me and there would be a mass arrest of our workers," she said.
Ms Bhutto's comments were clearly directed at Mr Leghari, a former close ally whom she now accuses of trying to impose a presidential system on Pakistan.
The Supreme Court's keenly awaited judgment, by a 6-1 majority of the seven judge bench, was applauded by business people and the markets.
The caretaker government installed by Mr Leghari complained it had inherited an economy in severe crisis from the Bhutto administration.