Inside The Pakistan Election: Odd Rules; Checkered History
With the country's checkered political history – since its inception it has spent as much time under military dictatorship as under democratic governments – there are some odd rules in the books.
One is that that staple of election dramas, the exit poll, is outlawed here. The "official" vote count has so often been rigged, and the results have often been so contentious, that the last thing the authorities have wanted was another set of numbers in the equation.
This time, the promise of a "free, fair and transparent" election appears to have been more or less kept. Whatever vote-rigging there was (and it's hard to change the habits of a lifetime) the unpopularity of Pervez Musharraf and his supporters was so deep that the opposition vote was able to override it.
If there was a surprise in the opposition victory, it was in the success of the Pakistan Muslim League – N party headed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It finished a close second to the Pakistan Peoples Party now led by Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari. As expected, a huge sympathy vote went to the PPP, but Sharif, who was allowed to return from exile just in time to file his election papers, now finds himself a very powerful man once again. And his hatred for Pervez Musharraf, the man who threw him out, is visceral.
With no party winning an absolute majority of National Assembly seats, the sound of politicians jockeying for position as they try to form coalition government, has just about drowning out the victory cheering.