TORONTO, May 4: Pakistan’s “deeply flawed” referendum has tarnished the image of Gen Pervez Musharraf, according to leading Canadian newspapers here.

“Fair, free and transparent. Pakistan’s deeply-flawed referendum conferring another five years of power on Gen Musharraf appears to have been none of the above,” said The Globe and Mail in its editorial comment yesterday.

Describing it as “unfortunate”, the newspaper wrote: “History may yet look back on the western-leaning, reform-minded Gen Musharraf as one of Pakistan’s better rulers, even if he did seize power in a (bloodless) military coup. But for the foreseeable future, any transition from military dictator to political statesman will be badly tarnished by a rubber-stamp referendum that should never have been staged.”

And staged it was, unless the widely-reported accounts of wholesale voting fraud have all been invented, said the editorial entitled “Voting for the general”.

Another influential newspaper The Toronto Star carried a detailed report on referendum under a blazing headline, “Musharraf victory denounced as a ‘fraud’”.