Govt's nominee Mamnoon Husain set to win

Mamnoon Husain, the government's presidential nominee, appears to virtually have won today poll even before the first vote has been cast.
But with the main opposition party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), having boycotted the process, it would almost be a cliché to say that this could well be the country's most controversial presidential election in recent years.
The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has assured itself of a walkover by first succeeding in changing the schedule of the elections to a date of its own choosing and then by getting “unconditional” support from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).
But it has also managed to throw into sharp relief the extremely disturbing divides within the polity.
By moving the Supreme Court to get the date of the election changed, something which is the exclusive constitutional domain of the Election Commission of Pakistan, the party has revived controversial arguments that the powerful institutions of the state (read, the superior judiciary under the present circumstances) always favour politics of a certain ideological hue, one that stands for a strong centrist national ideology with heavy input from religion.
The parties that stand for any other brand of politics may easily claim that they have never been given a level playing field in national politics.
Whether this claim has any merit or is just a ruse by these parties to hide their failures elsewhere in politics, and most specifically in governance, is of little consequence in the larger argument about which way the state and society in Pakistan must move in order to get out of the troubled times they are in.