Coalition government likely

Islamabad: The prospect of a coalition seems likely with no party winning the required 172-seat simple majority in Parliament to form government on its own.

The Pakistan Peoples Party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the Awami National Party and other parties may form the government.

The two major parties were in touch and the PML-N leader and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who himself had been disqualified to stand in the election, said negotiations with PPP and others would be held in the days ahead.

He told a news conference in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, that he had a phone conversation with PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari.

Sharif said he would meet Zardari in Islamabad tomorrow and before that the PML-N central working committee would hold in-depth talks on the issue of government formation and cooperation among opposition parties.

In the national capital, Zardari chaired a meeting of the PPP's central executive after which the party was expected to outline its approach on all issues including working with Musharraf, something that Sharif rejects.

Supporters of winners celebrated after the nation's vote for change, which blazing headlines in newspapers saw as silent revolution.

Voice of the nation

A crestfallen Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam) president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, gracefully accepted what he called "voice of the nation" and said the party was ready to sit in the opposition in the new assembly, which may convene this month.

Shujaat was among a string of PML-Q stalwarts beaten by big margins in the polls by either PPP or PML-N candidates.

Though PPP was at the top in national assembly and largest party in regional assembly in Sindh, its secretary general Jehangir Badar lost the election in Lahore.

In Sindh, PPP stalwart Aftab Shaban Mirani also tasted defeat despite a sympathy wave in the ake of December 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The Awami National Party, based in North West Frontier Province, staged an impressive comeback on the political scene after many years in wilderness, gaining 10 seats in the federal assembly and becoming the single largest party in the province.

Pakistan's main alliance of Islamist parties faced heavy losses, five years after winning control of a key province bordering Afghanistan, unofficial election results showed.

The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance was the third-largest grouping in the previous national parliament with 50 seats.

But they had won just three seats out of 235 counted in unofficial results announced by state run television yesterday afternoon, the day after crucial parliamentary elections across Pakistan.

Anti-US sentiment

Formed in 2002, the alliance won control of the volatile North West Frontier Province on the back of fierce anti-American sentiment after US-led troops overthrew the hardline Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001.

Their electoral success raised international fears about a growing influence of hardline Islam in politics in nuclear-armed Pakistan.

- With additional inputs from agencies

Detained firebrand lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan called yesterday for President Pervez Musharraf to quit or face impeachment after his allies conceded defeat in elections.

"He is the most hated man in the country and he must resign. There is no other way," Ahsan said at his home in an upmarket suburb of the eastern city of Lahore, where he has spent months under house arrest.

"If he doesn't resign, he should be impeached," said Ahsan, president of Pakistan's Supreme Court bar association. Ahsan, a key leader of lawyers' protests which rocked Pakistan last year, said any new government must reinstate 63 judges sacked by Musharraf under emergency rule last year, or face the consequences.

"If they are not reinstated by the ninth of March then we will march on Islamabad," he said, referring to lawyers and judges.

He said he was hopeful they would be reinstated.