The six-week delay to Pakistan’s elections announced yesterday is too long. It favours President Musharraf; no surprise that his party endorsed the recommendation of the chief election commissioner (regarded by opposition parties as a Musharraf official) while those parties loudly protested.

Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was the keenest to press ahead with the original date of January 8, expecting to benefit from a sympathy vote. Its wishes should have been respected; if it could have coped with losing Bhutto, then the Pakistani authorities should have been able to cope with the disruption to some towns that her assassination caused.

The best that can be said is that they picked a firm date; a silent limbo would have provoked more unrest. In those extra weeks, the Government needs to get ready to demonstrate that the elections are free and fair, and not hide behind the excuse of turmoil. The more that Musharraf can bring himself to let in outside help, the better.

Officials yesterday indicated that they might be open to foreign help in investigating Bhutto’s death; it would help confidence even more if they allowed a formal international probe, but they have ruled this out.

Tariq Azim, a senator of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q faction), which supports Musharraf, called the delay until February 18 reasonable and realistic, given the “conditions on the ground”. Qazi Mohammed Farooq, the chief election commissioner, said that election offices in 11 districts of Sindh, Bhutto’s home province, were burnt down in the riots after her death and that the fires had destroyed transparent ballot boxes, voters’ screens, voters’ lists and other election materials.

Officials from the PPP dismissed these as “lame-duck and baseless excuses”. They are right. As Farzana Raja, the PPP spokeswoman, pointed out, the electoral lists should be held in central offices, to be easily reprinted.

The reliability of those lists is another matter; opposition parties have criticised the Election Commission’s independence, saying that Musharraf has filled it with partisan and unqualified people down to district level. As it happens, he said the same of them when he seized office in 1999. But, even if imperfect, those lists existed on Bhutto’s death and there is no good reason why they could not be reproduced without delay.

There have been concerns that international observers might find it hard to do their job by Tuesday. But that is to overstate the turmoil. The sense of shock is immense, but not enough has been destroyed, even in Sindh, to say that the practicalities are insurmountable.

It is ridiculous that opposition parties want early polls, and that the Government should deny them on the ground of disorder, which only it can discern.

A coda, on the question of international help: the more the better, for the elections, and for the investigation of Bhutto’s death. But, unfortunately, the gathering of evidence from the crime scene appears poor (the road was hosed down quickly after the blast) as it was in the Karachi attempt on Bhutto’s life, where people were allowed to clamber around her bus for hours afterwards. Photographs of the crowd, and an appeal for informers – the new tactics deployed yesterday – may be the best that are left.

But it is in Musharraf’s interests to use forensic inquiries to counter the conspiracy theories that will otherwise fill the vacuum.

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