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    ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistanis dealt a crushing defeat to President Pervez Musharraf in parliamentary elections on Monday, in what government and opposition politicians said was a firm rejection of his policies since 2001 and those of his close ally, the United States.


    Almost all the leading figures in the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, the party that has governed for the last five years under Mr. Musharraf, lost their seats, including the leader of the party, the former speaker of Parliament and six ministers.

    Official results are expected Tuesday, but early returns indicated that the vote would usher in a prime minister from one of the opposition parties, and opened the prospect of a Parliament that would move to undo many of Mr. Musharraf’s policies and that may even try to remove him.

    The early edge went to the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party, which seemed to benefit from a strong wave of sympathy in reaction to the assassination of its leader, Benazir Bhutto, on Dec. 27, and may be in a position to form the next government.

    The results were interpreted here as a repudiation of Mr. Musharraf as well as the Bush administration, which has staunchly backed Mr. Musharraf for more than six years as its best bet in the campaign against the Islamic militants in Pakistan. American officials will have little choice now but to seek alternative allies from among the new political forces emerging from the vote.

    Politicians and party workers from Mr. Musharraf’s party said the vote was a protest against government policies and the rise in terrorism here, in particular against Mr. Musharraf’s heavy-handed way of dealing with militancy and his use of the army against tribesmen in the border areas, and against militants in a siege at the Red Mosque here in the capital last summer that left more than 100 people dead.

    Others said Mr. Musharraf’s dismissal last year of the Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who remains under house arrest, was deeply unpopular with the voters.

    Mr. Musharraf, who stepped down as army chief last November after being re-elected to another five-year term as president, has seen his standing plummet as the country has faced a determined insurgency by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and a deteriorating economy.

    By association, his party suffered badly. The two main opposition parties — the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N of Nawaz Sharif, a former rime minister — surged into the gap.

    By early Monday night, crowds of Sharif supporters had already begun celebrating as they paraded through the streets of Rawalpindi, the garrison town just outside the capital, Islamabad. Riding on motorbikes and clinging to the backs of minivans, they played music and waved the green flags of Mr. Sharif’s party decorated with the party symbol, a tiger.

    From unofficial results the private news channel, Aaj Television, forecast that the Pakistan Peoples Party would win 110 seats in the 272-seat National Assembly, with Mr. Sharif’s party taking 100 seats.

    Mr. Musharraf’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, was crushed, holding on to just 20 to 30 seats. Early results released by the state news agency, The Associated Press of Pakistan, also showed the Pakistan Peoples Party to be leading in the number of seats won.

    The Election Commission of Pakistan declared the elections free and fair and said the polling passed relatively peacefully, despite some irregularities and scattered violence. Ten people were killed and 70 injured around the country, including one candidate who was shot in Lahore on the night before the vote, Pakistani news channels reported.

    Fearful of violence and deterred by confusion at polling stations, voters did not turn out in large numbers. Yet fears from opposition parties that the government would try to rig the elections did not materialize, as the early losses showed.

    Official results were not expected until Tuesday morning, but all the parties were already coming to terms with the anti-Musharraf trend in the voting.

    At the headquarters of Sheik Rashid Ahmed, the minister of railways and a close friend of the president, his supporters sat gloomily in chairs under an awning, listening to the cheers of their opponents. “Q is finished,” said Tahir Khan, 21, one of the party workers, referring to the pro-Musharraf party.

    The party workers said Mr. Ahmed, who was among the ministers who lost their seats, was popular but had suffered from the overwhelming protest vote against Mr. Musharraf and his governing faction.

    The results opened a host of new challenges for the Bush administration, which has been criticized in Congress and by Pakistan analysts for relying too heavily on Mr. Musharraf. Even as Mr. Musharraf’s standing plummeted and the insurgency gained strength, senior Bush administration officials praised Mr. Musharraf as a valued partner in the effort against terrorism.

    With Mr. Musharraf as both president and head of the Pakistani military — a post he relinquished last November — the administration poured about $1 billion a year in military assistance into Pakistan after 9/11.

    After Mr. Musharraf stepped down from the army, the Bush administration still gave him unequivocal support. Last month, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Richard A. Boucher, told Congress he considered the Pakistani leader indispensable to American interests.

    Such fidelity to Mr. Musharraf often raised the hackles of Pakistanis, and the newspapers here were filled with editorials that expressed despair about Washington’s close relationship with the unpopular leader.

    Many educated Pakistanis said they were irritated that the Bush administration chose to ignore Mr. Musharraf’s dismissal in November of the Supreme Court chief justice.

    The big swing against the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party that supported Mr. Musharraf appeared to bear out the position of the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, who has been a critic of the administration’s Pakistan policy.

    On his arrival on Sunday to observe the elections, Mr. Biden said: “I don’t buy into the argument that Musharraf is the only one. We have to have more than just a Musharraf policy.”

    As a starting point for a new policy, Mr. Biden said the United States needed to show Pakistanis that Washington was interested in more than the campaign against terrorism. He suggested that economic development aid be tripled to $1.5 billion annually.

    But Washington could take some comfort in the losses of the Islamic religious parties in the North-West Frontier Province that abut the tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have carved out bases.

    The greatest blow for Mr. Musharraf came in the strong wave of support in Punjab Province, the country’s most populous, for Mr. Sharif, who has been a bitter rival since his government was overthrown by Mr. Musharraf in a military coup in 1999 and he was arrested and sent into exile.

    He returned last November, and although banned from running for Parliament himself, he has campaigned for his party on an openly anti-Musharraf agenda, calling for the president’s resignation and for the reinstatement of Mr. Chaudhry and other Supreme Court judges.

    Underscoring the reversal for Mr. Musharraf was the downfall of the powerful Chaudhry family of Punjab Province, who had underwritten his political career by creating the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party for him.

    “The myth is broken; it was a huge wave against Musharraf,” said Athar Minallah, a lawyer involved in the anti-Musharraf lawyers’ movement. “Right across the board his party was defeated, in the urban and rural areas. The margins are so big they couldn’t have rigged it even if they tried.”

    A few hours after the size of the defeat became clear, the government eased up on the restrictions against Aitzaz Ahsan, the leader of the lawyers’ movement that has opposed the president. Mr. Ahsan, who has been under house arrest since last November, when Mr. Musharraf imposed emergency rule for six weeks, found the phones in his house were suddenly reconnected.

    “Musharraf should be preparing a C-130 for Turkey,” Mr. Ahsan said, referring to Mr. Musharraf’s statements that he might retire to Turkey, where he spent part of his childhood.

    Two politicians close to Mr. Musharraf have said in the past week that the president was well aware of the drift in the country against him and they suggested that he would not remain in office if the new government was in direct opposition to him. “He does not have the fire in the belly for another fight,” said one member of his party. He added that Mr. Musharraf was building a house for himself in Islamabad and would be ready soon to move.


    That's:
    PPP (Bhutto's kid): 110 seats
    PML-N (Sharif): 100
    PML-Q (Perv): 20-30

    If this projection is accurate, it looks like the MMA (fundies) wouldn't get more than 30-40 seats (probably significantly fewer)...

    It takes 2/3 of Parliament (182 seats) to impeach.
    "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
    -Bokonon

  • #2
    Frankly, I'm amazing that there doesn't appear to be significant vote rigging. One'd expect Mushie to get at least an impeachment-proof Parliament (i.e. 3 to 5 times what he appears to have gotten). There was reported voter suppression (renting out all the buses, etc.), but that doesn't seem to be all that effective. 'Course, these are only the unofficial results, so there are plenty of opportunities left...
    "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
    -Bokonon

    Comment


    • #3
      And the MMA gets beaten pretty badly in the NWFP:


      ANP regains its stronghold



      By Waseem Ahmed Shah and Mohammad Ali


      PESHAWAR, Feb 18: The Pushtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) has emerged as the largest single party in the NWFP assembly, followed in strength by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) which has virtually relegated the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) to fourth position in Monday’s general election.

      According to preliminary, unofficial results, the ANP won 29 seats in the NWFP assembly while the PPP bagged 14. With a collective number of 20 seats, it is the independents — some of whom have past party affiliations — who have emerged as the second largest group in the assembly. Most of the independent candidates come from the now defunct Hazara division.

      At the time of filing of this report, the results from eight provincial assembly constituencies were awaited while elections on three seats have been postponed.

      The JUI-F which contested the election with its favourite symbol of the book under the MMA banner, managed to get merely 12 seats, most of them from the southern districts of the province. The PPP Sherpao won five seats but may improve its tally by another two, if two independents candidates who were formerly associated with it rejoin the party.

      The PML-N has fared comparatively well vis-à-vis the PML-Q. The Nawaz league clinched five seats, four from Hazara and the fifth from Lakki Marwat.

      The PML-Q posted a miserable tally of three seats, all of them from Hazara.

      Polling got off to a poor start in the morning largely due to insecurity prevailing in the wake of recent blasts and suicide bombings. The insecurity had been exacerbated by the government which had declared 18 of the 24 districts ‘sensitive’. However, things improved considerably in the afternoon. Even in the restive Swat district that saw four bombings on Monday, voting continued, albeit with a very low turnout.

      By and large, the results reflected the political assessments made by the ANP and the PPP, both of which were staging a comeback after suffering a shocking defeat earlier at the hands of the six-party religious alliance, the MMA.

      “The results clearly indicate that politics in the NWFP is returning to form,” said one political analyst. The ANP appears to have regained its lost territory in its former strongholds of Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda, Mardan and Swabi. It has surprisingly won all the seats in the troubled Swat region as well as the adjoining Buner district.

      The PPP too has won most of its seats from Peshawar, Mardan, Nowshera, Upper Dir, Lower Dir and Malakand in the former strongholds of the Jamaat-i-Islami.

      The Jamaat-i-Islami, led by Qazi Hussain Ahmad, has boycotted the elections.

      Interestingly, the contest mainly remained confined between the ANP and the PPP, making them straight rivals in most districts.

      The voters’ mood in the provincial arena was also reflected in the National Assembly. The ANP has won nine seats with the PPP winning eight. The PML-Q won five seats, the PML-N three and the MMA three seats, according to unofficial results.

      The MMA won 29 of the 35 seats last time round.

      The PPP-Sherpao’s leader and former interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao retained his National Assembly seat while three seats went to independent candidates in Swabi.

      Out of the 35 National Assembly seats from the NWFP, results from three constituencies were awaited. These included two constituencies from the Mansehra district and one from Swabi, where ANP leader Asfandyar Wali Khan was pitted against the wealthy independent candidate Usman Taraki, contesting from the platform of Swabi Jamhouri Ittehad. Asfandyar Wali Khan won his National Assembly seat from his native Charsadda district but disputes over vote counting and charges of irregularities by ANP activists against the cigarette-manufacturing tycoon forced authorities to delay announcement of the results there.

      The other major upset came for the JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who lost badly to the PPP candidate, Faisal Karim Kundi, by a large margin in his home constituency of Dera Ismail Khan. To Fazlur Rehman’s relief, however, he managed to win from the neighbouring Bannu district, home to his former chief minister Muhammad Akram Khan Durrani. Three of Fazlur Rehman’s brothers – Maulana Ataur Rehman, Maulana Lutfur Rehman and Maulana Obaidur Rehman – who were contesting for national and provincial assembly seats, lost to rival candidates.

      The president of the PML-Q NWFP, Amir Muqam, who was contesting for a national and a provincial assembly seats from Peshawar, lost both. However, he managed to retain his National Assembly seat from his native Shangla district.

      The PML-N secretary-general, Iqbal Zaffar Jhagra, set a record of sorts by having never been able to win an election. He was contesting for national and provincial assembly seats from Peshawar and lost both.

      PESHAWAR, Feb 18: The Pushtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) has emerged as the largest single party in the...


      In the provincial assembly, of the 83 seats reported so far, the Islamists are down to less than 14.5%; in the national assembly delegation, 8.5%. Those are pretty spectacular numbers for what's considered to be the stronghold of Islamist sentiment in the country. Particularly considering voter suppression against women and the PPP/PML-N.
      "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
      -Bokonon

      Comment


      • #4
        There was an article in the Times a few weeks ago that said that the reason for the fundies getting so many seats in the last election was a response to the US invasion of Iraq... an outlier of sorts, and that the people really didn't have a history of supporting fundamentalism.

        It seems like their projections that the Islamist parties would lose sway was correct.
        “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
        - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

        Comment


        • #5
          lol mush pwnd

          Also, this shows how much of a joke teh whole "OMG Pakistan is teh fundamentalist and if we don't support Mush, bin Laden will get teh nukes" meme is.
          THEY!!111 OMG WTF LOL LET DA NOMADS AND TEH S3D3NTARY PEOPLA BOTH MAEK BITER AXP3REINCES
          AND TEH GRAAT SINS OF THERE [DOCTRINAL] INOVATIONS BQU3ATH3D SMAL
          AND!!1!11!!! LOL JUST IN CAES A DISPUTANT CALS U 2 DISPUT3 ABOUT THEYRE CLAMES
          DO NOT THAN DISPUT3 ON THEM 3XCAPT BY WAY OF AN 3XTARNAL DISPUTA!!!!11!! WTF

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
            There was an article in the Times a few weeks ago that said that the reason for the fundies getting so many seats in the last election was a response to the US invasion of Iraq... an outlier of sorts, and that the people really didn't have a history of supporting fundamentalism.

            It seems like their projections that the Islamist parties would lose sway was correct.

            Comment


            • #7
              Yay to Pakistan showing the rest of the world that islamic countries can be functional democracies ...
              <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
              I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

              Comment


              • #8
                It's also worth pointing out, shifting to the other election thread, that McCain has been, to some extent, backing Musharraf, while Obama and Clinton have been a lot more supportive of the opposition.
                "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
                -Bokonon

                Comment


                • #9
                  There's teh PML-N in Punjab, ANP in NWFP, PPP/MQM in Sindh, but which is teh big Baloch party?
                  THEY!!111 OMG WTF LOL LET DA NOMADS AND TEH S3D3NTARY PEOPLA BOTH MAEK BITER AXP3REINCES
                  AND TEH GRAAT SINS OF THERE [DOCTRINAL] INOVATIONS BQU3ATH3D SMAL
                  AND!!1!11!!! LOL JUST IN CAES A DISPUTANT CALS U 2 DISPUT3 ABOUT THEYRE CLAMES
                  DO NOT THAN DISPUT3 ON THEM 3XCAPT BY WAY OF AN 3XTARNAL DISPUTA!!!!11!! WTF

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    The Baloch nationalists apparently sat this one out.

                    Balochistan: saving grace for PML-Q



                    By Saleem Shahid


                    QUETTA, Feb 19: Despite having been virtually routed in three provinces, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q has emerged as the largest single party in the Balochistan assembly, bagging 17 of 51 seats.

                    The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which had won 12 seats in 2002 and was part of the coalition government led by the PML-Q, could get only seven seats this time.

                    The PPP made a comeback and won seven seats. It had bagged only two seats in the last election.

                    Independent candidates secured 11 and emerged as the second largest group in the assembly.

                    Despite the absence of JUI-F’s arch rival, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, the MMA could not strengthen its position.

                    The other coalition partner of the PML-Q in the last government, the Balochistan National Party (Awami group), won five seats this time, thanks to the boycott by Baloch nationalist parties.

                    In the 2002 election, the PML-Q had won 16 provincial seats. It had also won three seats reserved for women and one for minority. Its strength reached 26 after independent candidates joined it to form the coalition government led by Jam Mir Mohammad Yousuf.

                    Although the PML-Q has retained most of its seats, its three former ministers and an MPA from Noshki have been defeated.

                    Before the polls, the PML-Q provincial leadership had claimed that they would win 32 to 36 seats and form the government in the province without the support of any other party.

                    Sources said that the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal had also claimed that it would get more seats, but differences in the party leadership badly affected its performance and its many heavyweights lost their seats.

                    The PPP surprised many political observers who were expecting the party to win only two to three seats in the province. It won four of Quetta’s six seats.

                    Another important outcome is that the Awami National Party (ANP) has won two provincial assembly seats this time. It was for the first time since the 1970 election that the ANP has won seats in Balochistan. In 1970, it had emerged as the majority party and formed its government headed by Sardar Ataullah Mengal.

                    Although the National Party has boycotted the election, its senior vice-president Sardar Sanaullah Zehri contested and formed his own group. He won a seat in the provincial assembly.
                    It looks like a lot depends on how the Indies lean. Q needs another 11 seats for a majority. PML-Q+all 11 Indies gives them the slimmest majority government. PML-Q+MMA+BNP gives them a 3 seat margin, but it doesn't sound like they were planning on courting any of the other parties (and I doubt that the MMA is amenable).
                    "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
                    -Bokonon

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