An election shocker in Pakistan

Well, well, well. It looks like Pervez Musharraf didn’t do such a good job rigging the elections after all:

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.

It looks like Benazir Bhutto’s party, the Pakistan People’s Party, will win a plurality of seats, followed by the Pakistan Muslim League of former PM Nawaz Sharif. But we’ll have to see what the official results bring when they are announced tomorrow, and we’ll have to see if any secret deal was in fact struck to keep Musharraf in power. He is sounding mighty conciliatory right now.

The best news of the night? The fundamentalists were apparently trounced in the Northwest Frontier Provinces.