Musharraf's Exit Urged After Election Rout

Former Pakistani PM Calls For President To Step Down After Opposition Parties Win

(CBS/AP)  A top opposition leader called Tuesday on President Pervez Musharraf to step aside after his ruling party conceded defeat in parliamentary elections. The vote was also a slap to Islamist parties, which lost control of a province where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have sought refuge.

With counting from Monday's election nearly complete, the two main opposition parties won a total of 154 of the 268 contested seats, according to the Election Commission.

The pro-Musharraf party trailed with 39 seats, and the group's leader acknowledged the loss.

"We accept the election results, and will sit on opposition benches," Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, chairman of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, told AP Television News. "We are accepting the results with grace and open heart."

Although final official results were not expected until Wednesday, opposition parties were confident of victory and began mapping plans for a new government and a possible showdown with Musharraf.

Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister and leader of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, recalled statements by Musharraf last year that he would step down only if he lost the support of the Pakistani people.

"He has closed his eyes. He has said before that he would go when the people want him to do so and now the people have given their verdict," Sharif told reporters in Lahore.

The Pakistan People's Party of assassinated ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto was leading with 86 seats and was likely to spearhead the new government in partnership with other opposition groups.

Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, told reporters Tuesday he would meet soon with Sharif and other opposition leaders "to form a government of national unity." Zardari made clear he would not include politicians who had been allied with Musharraf.

"We will seek support from democratic forces to form the government, but we are not interested in any of those people who are part and parcel of the previous government," Zardari said.

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"Only On The Web": Mark Phillips Talks with Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., about the Pakistan election and how U.S. interests may be affected.

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But Zardari carefully avoided an unequivocal statement about whether Musharraf should remain in power. The two main opposition parties were unlikely to finish with two-thirds of the seats required to impeach the president.

Already Zardari is distancing himself from America's war against Islamic militants in his country, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.

"I think the whole war on terror has been defined wrong," Zardari said. "It is a war of terror against Pakistan and we have to fight it as our war."

The United States may have cooled to Musharraf even before this election, reports Phillips. But whatever his failings in being an ally in the fight against terrorism, at least dealing with one man was simple. Power has now been fragmented and dealing with Pakistan just got a lot messier.

Musharraf's spokesman, Rashid Quereshi, rejected suggestions the Pakistani president step down. Sen. John Kerry, who met Tuesday with Musharraf along with other U.S. lawmakers, said the Pakistani leader expressed willingness to work with the new government.

But the former general is so unpopular among the Pakistani public that opposition parties are likely to find little reason to work with him - particularly since he no longer controls the powerful army.

At best, Musharraf faces the prospect of remaining in power with sharply diminished powers even if the opposition fails to muster the two-thirds support in parliament to impeach him. Constitutionally, the president is the head of state and nominally the commander in chief of the armed forces. He also has the power to dissolve parliament.

But the prime minister runs the government on a day-to-day basis. With a strong electoral mandate, the new prime minister would doubtless command greater authority than those who served under Musharraf's military rule.

The White House, which has backed Musharraf because of his support for the war against terror, declined to comment until the final results were announced. But a State Department spokeswoman, Nicole Thompson, called the election "an important step on the path towards an elected, civilian democracy."

Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of several U.S. lawmakers who observed the election, said the results mean the United States can shift its Pakistan policy.

"This is an opportunity for us to move from a policy that has been focused on a personality to one based on an entire people," Biden said, adding that Washington should encourage more deeply rooted democracy in Pakistan.

Pakistani analysts said the results pointed to broad support for centrist, democratic parties at the expense of patronage politicians and Islamist movements.

The pro-Taliban Jamiat-e-Ulema party won only three seats in the national parliament. And a coalition of Islamist religious parties was poised to lose control of the regional administration in the North West Frontier Province, which it won in the 2002 elections.

Unofficial returns showed the secular Awami National Party had won 31 of the 96 contested seats in the provincial assembly, with the religious United Action Forum taking only nine seats.

Awami vice chairman Haji Ghulan Ahmad Balor said his group would form a governing coalition with other "like-minded" factions.

Residents of the province had complained the Islamist government failed to provide public services and was unable to prevent foreign fighters from crossing the border from Afghanistan.

[watcher269-2009]

Maybe Musharraf can find a home in Londonistan??

Posted by ilikecats1

---------------------------

I hear he is going to Texasstan - or a little town named CrawfordIraqStan

[voidmaster-2009]

I%u2019m beginning to see a common theme in politics. People are finally tired of the %u201Csame ol%u2019 same ol%u2019.%u201D And I am elated that it is not just in the U. S. I sincerely hope it continues.

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by luvneverend1 at 12:43 AM : Feb 20, 2008

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[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by lily1984

As we are upset with porn site spammers invading our discussions. You have been reported, again.

[brianbwb-2009]

"The vote was also a slap to Islamist parties, which lost control of a province where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have sought refuge."

"The White House, which has backed Musharraf because of his support for the war against terror, declined to comment until the final results were announced."

These two statements, in the same story, illustrate two serious problems, one that the US backing of Musharraf was really meant to maintain a presence of Al Qaeda, as a boogie man to continue to create false justification for invading Middle East countries, Bush and the CIA actually supported Bin Laden''s friend and protector.

Two, the mass media''s complicity in the dissemination of false information by the corrupt Bush regime has been exposed through the demonstration of how unpopular Musharraf really was, even though the western media assisted Bush in pushing him as the "agent of democracy", and until recently as a bulwark against "terrorism".

Ironic that the party of a dead woman still crushed Musharraf, so his, and the CIA''s plan to eliminate the competition failed.

[smirk5]

On the front page of Tuesday''s Washington Post was an article detailing how in late January U.S. forces, acting with autonomy inside Pakistan, were able to target and kill Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander.

The strike, which came without the Pakistani government''s knowledge and helped eliminate an individual who had long eluded the spy-agency''s capture, was an obvious boon in the War on Terror. But the political implications of the operation were just as fascinating.

In August, Sen. Barack Obama had made the argument that, as president, he would target Al Qaeda officials in Pakistan even without the country''s acquiescence -- the type of attack that, six months later, proved to be successful.

At the time, Obama was roundly criticized for his remarks, both by his Democratic competitors for the White House and by the Bush administration.

[cyberus-2009]

Big deal ... so he leaves office *again* and in 12-18 months takes over again *like before*

[joyous88]

The same thing is about to happen to our little dictator,

people are sick of these conservative criminals in the government funneling fortunes , billions, to their
halibrton''s and blackwater''s.

criminal republicans

[rowdytexan2]

http://ostroyreport.blogspot.com/2008/02/help-this-man-find-job.html

[donbl1]

b-easy, don''t forget who pressured Musharraff to hold elections: The U.S.

Now, we will see if "that" was a good idea.