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Musharraf to be lame duck--or jobless

Al P, Islamabad
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will become a powerless leader at best -- and could lose his job -- after his parliamentary supporters conceded defeat in elections, analysts said yesterday.
The former ruling party, which backed Musharraf for the past five and a half years, conceded defeat Tuesday following parliamentary polls a day earlier.
The concession by the Pakistan Muslim League-Q left the parties of former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, the slain opposition leader, on course tor victory.
After holding a firm grip on power for eight years, the former general and key US ally in the fight against al-Qaeda will have to make frantic deals with a hostile parliament that could in theory call for his impeachment, the analysts
said.
"Musharraf has become a lame duck president," said Hasan Askari, a political analyst teaching at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.
"For him the most crucial issue will be his political survival rather than fighting the war against terrorism."
source of power, Askari added.
Strategic Forecasting, private Washington-based analysts, called the election results a "disastrous outcome" for the president's allies.
"It appears that Musharraf was no longer able to make use of the state machinery (especially the intelligence agencies) to rig the vote," they said.
Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted in a 1999 coup, has been uncompromising in his calls for the man he calls "’dictator" to step down. Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) still mistrusts Musharraf after the death of its leader in a gun and suicide attack at a rally on December 27.
Analysts said that with neither party likely able to form a government on their own, Musharraf may try to split the PPP from Sharif with the promise of the prime ministers post if they join with independent MPs who are loyal to him.
"President Musharraf would be under great pressure because his position has been greatly weakened, because it's an indictment against his policy," Talat Masood, a former general who is now a defence and political analyst, told AFP
The opposition could unite to get the two-thirds majority’ they need to seek Musharraf s ouster through impeachment, although analysts see this as unlikely because Musharraf -retains the power to dissolve the' government.
"The situation is extremely troublesome for him. He may try to undermine the internal coherence of the opposition but it is such a landslide that he may find it difficult to stay at the helm of the affairs, "Askari said.
Shafqat Mahmood, a political analyst and newspaper columnist, said any attempt at manipulating the opposition would fail.