Islamabad: Dealing a body blow to the ruling PML-Q loyal to President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's opposition PPP and PML-N today emerged as the largest parties in parliamentary polls and may jointly form a government, threatening the eight-year rule of the former General.

A day after the Pakistanis voted for a new Parliament, state-run PTV said that Pakistan People's Party (PPP), riding on a sympathy wave following the December 27 assassination of its leader Benazir Bhutto, bagged 85 seats while PML-N of former premier Nawaz Sharif was at the second position with 65. If the two parties jointly form a government, a possibility they had been exploring for the past few days, Musharraf could be impeached in Parliament.

With results out for 248 of the 269 National Assembly seats for which the polling took place yesterday, the ruling PML-Q got only 37 seats. So far, MQM had received 19 seats, ANP 10, PPP(S) 1 and others 31. Polling was not held in three Nation Assembly constituencies while the Election Commission suspended results for two.

Many were surprised by the results because it had widely been expected that the sympathy wave generated by Bhutto's assassination sweep her party to power. On the provincial assemblies front, the PML-N swept the polls in Punjab while PPP was leading in Sindh, its traditional stronghold, Geo News reported. The religious parties that ruled North West Frontier Province's assembly were routed by the ANP and the PPP while the PML-Q took an early lead in Balochistan, where many local parties had boycotted the polls.

 

Source : PTI