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Pakistanis Deal Severe Defeat to Musharraf in Election
By Carlotta Gall and Jane Perlez
The New York Times
Tuesday 19 February 2008
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.
Early results showed equal gains for the Pakistan Peoples Party, whose leader,
Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated on Dec. 27, and the Pakistan Muslim League-N,
the faction led by Nawaz Sharif, like Ms. Bhutto a former prime minister. Each
party 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 him 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 - 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.
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Jane Perlez reported from Lahore, Pakistan, and Carlotta Gall from
Islamabad. David Rohde contributed reporting from Peshawar, and Salman Masood
from Rawalpindi.
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