Oh, Those Elections! Yeah, About Those.

Qazi Mohammed Farooq announced today that Pakistan will postpone its elections until February 18th , since the riots sparked by Bhutto's assassination have resulted in the burning of several election commission offices and ballots and voter rolls have been destroyed. Those things can obviously not be replaced by the original January 8th date, and then the Shiite festival of Muharram starts on the 10th and runs through February 8th and they naturally couldn't hold elections then, either. This, naturally, has nothing whatsoever to do with some vague hope that giving people a month might not result in nearly everyone voting for Bhutto's party. Plus, it was totally random violence that resulted in the election commission offices being destroyed along with ballots and voter rolls and not at all like the time Hitler burned the Reichstag and blamed the Commies in order to run the country better on his own. Definitely not at all like that. [ NY Times ]