To boycott or not to boycott?

The latest debate raging within political circles is whether or not to boycott the upcoming sham elections on January 8. Here is how I feel about the whole election exercise:

To those who argue for participating in the sham election, this is what I have to say: enough is enough. This is the least we can do, to not give legitimacy to this dictator and to fake elections engineered by the army, to produce an outcome that is desirable for the army, the general Pakistani establishment, and last but not least the USA.

Boycotting the Jan. 8 election is more than past due. We should have boycotted the 2002 elections, which were also engineered to produce a parliament that has helped enable every one of Musharraf's moves, as well as establish the bogeyman of fundamentalism, originally constructed to scare Westerners and Pakistani liberals but now real entities to themselves. Any new parliament emerging from Jan. 8 will be an even bigger joke. We can expect nothing from such a parliament, and we should demand nothing less than a real election in which there is meaningful choice and true debate. Nothing less.