Pakistan: Now comes the hard part: Forming a new government

Still bathing in the afterglow of their decisive victory at the polls, Pakistan's rival opposition parties will embark in earnest today on the task of forming a government, a challenge that may prove as difficult as winning a mandate in the first place.

Before Monday's parliamentary election, the talk among opposition groups was of unity in defeating allies of President Pervez Musharraf. That accomplished, they are digging in for a period of intense negotiation as the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the two biggest vote-getters, try to consolidate their gains and grab the political edge before public goodwill fades.

The party leaders, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari, widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, are scheduled to begin hashing out differences and trading demands, a process that could drag on for days.

The Pakistan Peoples Party said it will push to reinstate the judiciary and lift restrictions placed on the media under the leadership of Musharraf.

Party leader Asif Ali Zardari said he will work with other parties in parliament to reinstate the chief justice of the Supreme Court and called for the release of several judges and lawyers under detention.

Pakistan's opposition parties claimed the elections would be rigged -- then they won. International monitors said Wednesday that the run-up to the vote was biased toward President Pervez Musharraf's allies but polling day was basically fair, enabling his critics to sweep to victory.

"A level playing field was not provided for the campaign," said Michael Gahler, chief of the European Union monitoring mission, noting that slanted state media coverage, restrictions on rallies and the arrest of political activists were among conditions benefiting the ruling party.

"But on election day," he added, "voting on the whole was assessed as positive."

With the count from Monday's parliamentary election nearly complete, the opposition parties of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had won enough seats to form a new government, though they were expected to fall short of the two-thirds needed to impeach Musharraf.

Voters in the deeply conservative North West Frontier Province threw out the Islamic parties that ruled the province for five years -- a clear sign that Pakistanis are rejecting religious extremism in a region where Al-Qaida and the Taliban have sought refuge.

Instead, voters in the turbulent province, which borders Afghanistan, gave their support to secular parties that promised to pave the streets, create jobs and bring peace through dialogue and economic incentives with the extremists.

"They have done nothing to help the people, and we are afraid to even come out from our homes because of all these bomb blasts," Bokhari Shah, 65, said of the religious parties.

The new provincial government is expected to be led by the Awami National Party, a left-leaning, secular group that backed the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan in its war against U.S. and Pakistani-backed Islamic guerrillas in the 1980s.

NEWS SERVICES