The political endgame loomed for Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf last night as his party was evicted from power and his arch rival, Nawaz Sharif, arrived in Islamabad to negotiate a place in the new government with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of murdered opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
Mr Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League was swept aside in a tide of anti-Musharraf sentiment. With 96 per cent of votes counted after Monday's election, the party had won just 39 of 268 contested seats, down from 118.
"All the king's men, gone!" proclaimed the headline in the Daily Times as jubilant voters danced in the streets, sang and fired bursts of gunfire into the air.
The main winner was the PPP, which won the most seats. But the surprise performance came from Mr Sharif, a former prime minister, whose party finished a close second. Neither party has an outright majority. Ms Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, and Mr Sharif arrived in Islamabad for powersharing 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.
Mr Sharif, ousted by Mr Musharraf in a 1999 coup, ran a campaign dominated by one unflinching demand: the removal of the "dictator" Musharraf.
Now he has his chance. Ecstatic loyalists chanted "The lion is coming again" outside Mr 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".
The rout claimed a number of powerful political scalps, including Musharraf confidante Sheikh Rashid, rumoured to have left the country within hours of defeat, and the party's backroom powerbroker Chaudhry Shujat Hussain.
Mr Hussain said the party had resigned itself to opposition, leaving an isolated Mr Musharraf exposed to a hostile parliament that may try to oust him from office.
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. Mr Ahsan said his phone was reconnected as the results streamed in on Monday. Yesterday, jail officials assigned to guard him failed to show up for work.
The return of Mr Ahsan, Pakistan's most prominent lawyer, heralds another headache for Mr Musharraf. Mr Ahsan vowed to renew the campaign for the release of former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who has been under house arrest with his wife and children since November 3rd. Mr Musharraf called the judge "the scum of the earth" in an interview last week.
Mr Ahsan attacked the US and Britain for supporting Mr Musharraf. "He is the most despised person in the country. Why should the Americans and Brits continue to put pennies in his cap? I don't understand."
Mr Musharraf's foreign friends are also piling on the pressure. Senator Joe Biden, a powerful Washington politician, travelled to Pakistan to monitor the vote. Before the poll he warned that the US could slash aid - $10 billion in mostly military aid since 2002 - if the elections were rigged.
Yesterday he said the election was "an opportunity to move from a policy focused on a personality to one based on an entire people".
The US seems to be priming itself for a post-Musharraf scenario. Over the past month his successor as army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, has been visited by top US military and intelligence officials. Gen Kayani was perceived as a close Musharraf ally but as Mr Musharraf's popularity fell, Gen Kayani pulled the army back from public glare, ordering soldiers to steer clear of politicians. The election's other major upset was the ignominious defeat of the religious parties that have ruled the North West Frontier and Baluchistan provinces since 2002.
In their place came secular Pashtun nationalists and the PPP - a welcome development for western countries hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in the area. - (Guardian service)