Coalition formation games set to start

A day after Thursday's general elections, Pakistan's political map seems to have changed drastically and beyond all pre-poll predictions.

The 'king's party', the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), has struggled to keep ahead of a defiant PML (Nawaz) and an equally stubborn Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP).

The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of nine religious parties, has for the first time since 1988 completely swept away the two-party system that had taken root in Pakistan in the last decade.

With most results across the country confirmed by last evening, the MMA is leading all other parties with at least 45 seats in the National Assembly. In second place is PPPP, with a total tally of around 48 seats with the PML-QA ahead with 70 seats.

Both parties are expected to claim around five to 10 more seats in their neck to neck race as the last few results come in. While the PML-N may have bagged only 13 seats so far, it has done better in the Punjab provincial elections.

In Sindh, the PPPP's stranglehold over the interior seems to have been dented by the National Alliance in tandem with Pir Pagara's Pakistan Muslim League (Functional), again a somewhat unexpected development.

Similarly, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement's iron hold on Sindh's cities has loosened, with the religious parties making inroads in Karachi and Hyderabad, taking away some key seats from the MQM.

While most Pakistani observers were accurate in predicting a hung parliament, most of them seem to have underestimated the anti-U.S. sentiment running across Pakistan, most notably in the NWFP and Balochistan.

Lahore, meanwhile, returned a majority of PML-N candidates, and even the PML-QA leader, Mian Mohammed Azhar, was soundly defeated by the PML-N-backed Jamaat leader Hafiz Salman Butt. Another surprise for Lahoris was the success of PAT's Maulana Tahirul Qadri.

In a somewhat unexpected result, voters in Lahore indeed showed that while the Sharif family may have been banished from the country, the party of Nawaz Sharif still lives on in the hearts of the public.
The PML-N swept seats in its 'heart' of Lahore, scattering PML-QA hopes like nine-pins.

Even candidates the PML-QA had estimated were 'certain' successes, such as Mian Humayuan Akhtar from NA-125 who had spent exorbitant sums of money on his campaign, came perilously close to losing, and after conflicting reports was finally declared a winner by only a few hundred votes.

In total, the PML-N had won five of Lahore's 11 seats, with the PPPP's Chaudhry Aitezaz Ahsan winning NA-124, where he was backed by the PML-N and the PPPP's Samina Ghurki winning NA-128. Liaquat Baloch of the MMA swept NA-126 with PML-N support.

However, the number of pro-government independent candidates and of course the games of alliance making that are already getting under way, will determine the new government.

In the Punjab Assembly, in a house of 297, while the PML-QA is expected to win around 115 seats, the PML-N and the PPPP may get around 70 seats. Final results from across Punjab are still awaited.

However, while the PML-N has shown strongly that it is still a force to reckon with despite the military regime's move against it, there is already rumour that it may soon find itself sidelined.

There are indications that within the government talk is floating of an alliance between the PML-QA and the Makhdoom Amin Fahim-led PPPP, with some sources saying "this proposal has already been put to Fahim who will discuss it with Benazir Bhutto in London."

There is a feeling in some official circles that given the number game working out in the assemblies, only a coalition of the two strongest groups, the PML-QA and the PPPP, would work to keep the influence of the religious parties in check.

Such an alliance is being seen as "especially important" given that the MMA has gained a record 40 seats or so in the National Assembly, creating a strong bloc of its own.

It will almost certainly form the provincial government in the NWFP, with 50 out of 99 seats, and also in Balochistan, where it has 15 seats in a house of 51.

The MMA has in fact also made significant gains in both the Punjab and Sindh, even if these do not always convert into seats.

In view of this unforeseen turn of events, the Musharraf regime is said also to have been 'advised' by its well-wishers overseas to play a role in setting up a strong anti-MMA front.