PAKISTAN:There were euphoric celebrations across Pakistan yesterday as the ruling party that supported President Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) was drummed out of power
A general election that had been overshadowed by fears of violence, suicide bomb attacks and rigging by pro-Musharraf local officials has unexpectedly turned into a triumph for democracy in Pakistan. A country written off as a failing state - vulnerable to disintegration along ethnic faultlines and to a collapse of military command structures that could jeopardise the security of its nuclear weapons - was yesterday once again optimistic about its own future.
The result is a shock to the US, which had been banking on Mr Musharraf being able to co-opt the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) into a friendly coalition government including the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister, as a linchpin partner. That dream, a reflection of the apparent disconnect between US policy and Pakistani realities, is now in tatters.
Seldom have US hopes and unofficial predictions been less aligned with popular sentiment. Washington yesterday said the government that emerges from the election should co-operate with the Pakistani president.
"Ultimately President Musharraf is still president of Pakistan," said Tom Casey, a US state department spokesman. "We would certainly hope that whoever becomes prime minister and whoever winds up in charge of the government would be able to work with him."
Mr Casey said the US did not believe the result would affect efforts against the Taliban and al- Qaeda in Pakistan. "I certainly don't think there's any indication . . . that there would be a different view of the importance of confronting extremism."
Washington fears that, under Mr Sharif's influence, any opposition-based coalition government, which yesterday seemed a likely outcome in a hung parliament, would be ambivalent about the war on terror.
Mr Sharif will not immediately be in parliament - he was banned from running because of criminal convictions after his ousting in a 1999 coup - but he will have a big say in the future course of the country and the fate of Mr Musharraf.
The future of the man on whom Washington has staked all its chips, Mr Musharraf, is now more uncertain than ever, his survival dependent on his acceptance of a diminished role in the country's politics.
If the Bhutto family's Pakistan People's party (PPP) and Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (N) on their own or with the assistance of smaller parties and independents, can muster the two-thirds majority needed to make constitutional changes, diplomats say Mr Musharraf will have to choose between rolling with the majority will, or "taking the temple down with him" by blocking a new government.
The intense rivalry between the centre-left PPP and centre-right Pakistan Muslim League (N) will make for a tough negotiation but, if they succeed in joining forces, they could leave Mr Musharraf, already forced to resign his position as army chief, as an all but irrelevant figure in politics.
The defeated Pakistan Muslim League (Q)'s dire performance gives Mr Musharraf little leverage over the new parliament. The PPP will emerge, by some distance, as the largest party but short of an absolute majority. It may have little choice but to forge an alliance with Mr Sharif. The PML is poised to win the second-largest share of seats, behind the PPP, thanks to a landslide in the populous Punjab.
"We're moving back to a more normal constitutional order in Pakistan, one in which the president will have a relatively small role to play in day-to-day government," says a western diplomat.
"The role of the president will revert to what it was before the 1999 coup. Not just ceremonial, because he retains moral authority and the power to dissolve assembly. I can't see any of the prime ministerial candidates allowing him to exercise power as he did between 2002 and 2007."
Mr Musharraf is making an attempt to cultivate a new persona. He turned out to vote in Rawalpindi on Monday, a constituency that the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) went on to lose by miles, wearing his nattiest civilian outfit, an open-necked shirt and a turquoise jacket. He has promised to work with the winners of the election and said that his role as president "is simply the checks and balances - the seatbelts . . . a sort of father figure to the prime minister, but I won't have to see him for weeks".
Some worry that he will continue to see himself as a chief executive. "Musharraf solves a crisis by having a bigger one," says Sartaj Aziz, a former foreign minister and finance minister under Mr Sharif. "There has been an almost unanimous upsurge in opinion that we can't allow this present - military rule with a civilian facade to continue. This may be the beginning of a new phase in our political life. If the PPP and the PML (N) get 70 per cent of the seats, then this system could be finished."
Rasul Baksh Rais, a political scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, said: "There's hardly any trust and respect for him any more. Whatever moral authority he had left disappeared on November 3rd [ when he declared a state of de facto martial law] because he did what he did in order to stay in power, with no regard to the constitution. He wants to survive and I don't know how he can be removed. No one wants military intervention. Impeachment is the only possibility."
An impeachment process can be started with the votes of 50 per cent of either the national assembly or the senate and needs the approval of two-thirds of both houses to succeed. Analysts say it is unlikely that starting such a process would be the immediate priority of any new coalition government. Rather, it is likely that the parties will use the threat of impeachment to secure other political objectives vis-a-vis the presidency.
A dangerous clash is looming over Mr Sharif's demand for the restoration of the judges sacked by Mr Musharraf during the state of emergency. This is a core demand of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), which made it a key point of differentiation with the PPP during the election campaign. If the former bench is restored, it would almost certainly resume its hearing of constitutional challenges to the legitimacy of Mr Musharraf's re-election as president last year.
Although the PPP is keen to talk up its commitment to the rule of law and to the independence of the judiciary, it is less eager to restore Iftikhar Chaudhary, the former chief justice.
Now under house arrest, Mr Chaudhary might also insist on hearing challenges to the national reconciliation ordinance, a decree waiving corruption charges that Ms Bhutto, the former prime minister, extracted from the president as part of their aborted powersharing deal.
"I told Mr Zardari that unless the judiciary is restored it cannot attain its independence," Mr Sharif, said at a press conference in Lahore in which he called on all democratic parties to push for the restoration of the "sovereignty of parliament".
Asked whether he planned to seek the impeachment of Mr Musharraf, he said: "Hopefully it will not come to that. The restored judiciary will have to give a judgment on the eligibility of Mr Musharraf's candidature."
Mr Sharif would be likely to demand significant concessions from the PPP in exchange for dropping his demand for the restoration of Mr Chaudhary.
Even so, it is doubtful that Mr Chaudhary, whose family has suffered hardship as a result of his principled stand, could be bought off, even by offers of alternative employment. His supporters doubt he would accept a compromise involving a symbolic restoration followed by a rapid move to head an organisation such as the election commission. - (Financial Times service)