Opposition winning big in Pakistan

Musharraf ally concedes defeat

Supporters a pro-Pervez Musharraf party celebrated the election results in favor of their canddate in Karachi yesterday. Musharraf opponents called on him to resign after his allies conceded in the general elections. (Pedro Ugarte/AFP/Getty Images)

LAHORE, Pakistan - A new political era dawned in Pakistan yesterday as partial results from Monday's parliamentary elections showed the opposition scoring a landslide win, the party allied with President Pervez Musharraf conceded defeat, and secular candidates ousted religious parties in the volatile northwest.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who heads the pro-government Pakistan Muslim League-Q, said his party would "accept the results with an open heart" and "sit on the opposition benches" in the new Parliament. By yesterday, with 80 percent of the vote counted, the two major opposition parties had won at least 148 seats in the 342-member National Assembly to the PML-Q's 36.

The vote was seen as a stinging rebuke of Musharraf. Aitzaz Ahsan, a lawyer and opposition party leader who has been under house arrest for three months, cast the result as a symbol of democracy.

"General Musharraf represents the rule of man over law, and the resounding verdict of the people is that they yearn to be ruled by laws, not men," he said.

The fallout from Monday's election could have a major impact on relations between Pakistan and the United States, which has strongly backed Musharraf as a partner on counterterrorism efforts, despite growing frustration over his failure to stop Islamic extremists from creating safe havens inside Pakistan and fueling the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

Pakistan was quiet yesterday except for bursts of drumming, dancing and celebratory gunfire outside rural opposition party offices, and fireworks after dark in some urban neighborhoods.

People seemed mostly relieved that the elections had concluded with only limited violence and irregularities, while both winning and losing candidates for parliament spoke of the need for cooperation and peace. Despite widespread predictions that the government would try to rig the elections, monitors said the polling process went surprisingly smoothly and the concession from PML-Q came quickly.

Nevertheless, the shape of the emerging political landscape was far from clear. Neither of the two main opposition groups - the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N - gained a majority, and neither has a dominant candidate for prime minister, thus opening the door to a variety of complicated coalitions and deals.

The PPP swept its bastion of Sindh Province and won the highest number of seats in the National Assembly, benefiting from sympathy over the December assassination of its leader, Benazir Bhutto, as well as disenchantment with Musharraf's rule. Official but not final results showed the PPP with 84 seats, the Pakistan Muslim League-N with 64, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q with 36, and three smaller parties with 29.

Ali Asif Zardari, Bhutto's widower and now the head of the PPP, said his party would form a government "in the center and all the four provinces with the help of our allies." He said the party had yet to decide who would become the "leader of parliament," presumably prime minister.

Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N and a two-time prime minister, reached out yesterday to the PPP, his party's longtime arch-rival, and to politicians who once backed Musharraf but have since excoriated him.

Sharif also called for Musharraf to step down in light of the public judgment against his rule. The army general agreed under pressure to remove his uniform in November, becoming a civilian president, but many Pakistanis want him to bow out of politics completely.

Musharraf has said he will work with any party that comes to power, but he has given no sign of being willing to leave office.