From The Asia Times
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Incoming results from Pakistan’s general elections on Monday show a landslide victory for opposition parties with the ruling party of President Pervez Musharraf and his allies headed for a crushing defeat. The greatest gains have been made by the late Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of former premier Nawaz Sharif. Stinging defeats have been handed to several stalwarts of the ruling party.

Analysts say the margin of difference is so decisive that pro-Musharraf forces throughout Pakistan face an uncertain political future. Still, as no single party has won an overall majority, it seems a coalition government will need to be negotiated once the final votes are counted.

“All the scripts of the pasts are now outdated and a new script will now be written in which the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People’s Party will be at the helm of national affairs in the future. The set-up will be without … Pervez Musharraf. This is what Ms Benazir Bhutto used to call the ‘revenge of democracy’,” Professor Husain Haqqani, director of the International Relations Department at Boston University, told Asia Times Online by phone from Washington.

“In the end, Pakistanis voted against the arrogant Pakistani establishment,” added Husain, a former diplomat and government minister who has spent many years in exile in the US.

Husain’s comments notwithstanding, the establishment’s role is still important. If the current administration, a key US ally in the region, can successfully manipulate the post-election scenario, a successful unity government with Musharraf as its leader is still a possibility.

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