Pervez Musharraf hears the voice of the Pakistani people ... and the voice is not friendly:
With counting from Monday's election nearly complete, the two main opposition parties won a total of 154 of the 268 contested seats, according to the Election Commission.
The pro-Musharraf party trailed with 39 seats, and the group's leader acknowledged the loss.
"We accept the election results, and will sit on opposition benches," Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, chairman of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, told AP Television News. "We are accepting the results with grace and open heart."
"All the King's men, gone!" proclaimed the headline in the Daily Times as jubilant voters danced in the streets, sang and fired celebratory bursts of gunfire into the air.
"It turned out to be a referendum on Musharraf," said analyst Irfan Husain. "I don't give him more than a few months, unless there is pressure from the US."
The main winner was the Pakistan People's party (PPP) of murdered opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, which polled the most seats. But the surprise performance came from Sharif, a former prime minister, whose party finished a close second.
Neither party has an outright majority. Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, and Sharif arrived in Islamabad for power-sharing talks last night. The horse-trading was widely welcomed as dire predictions of vote rigging and violence failed to materialise. Although there were localised complaints of irregularities they were not enough to halt the opposition surge.
Sharif, ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 coup, ran a campaign dominated by one unflinching demand: the removal of "dictator" Musharraf. Now he has his chance.
Ecstatic loyalists chanted "The lion is coming again!" outside Sharif's Lahore home, where the bullish opposition leader recalled an old Musharraf promise. "He would say 'when people want, I will go'. Now the people have given their verdict," he said, vowing to work out a plan to "say goodbye to dictatorship forever".
In a striking sign of the retired general's faltering authority, lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, who has been under house arrest for over three months, welcomed the media to his home. Ahsan said his phone was re-connected as the results streamed in on Monday. Yesterday, jail officials assigned to guard him failed to show up for work.
Change: it isn't just for American elections anymore. What will Dubya do now that his man is in trouble ...?
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Tell a friend
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
