The only point on which Pakistan’s political parties are really agreed is getting rid of President Musharraf. Beyond that not much is clear. They agreed on Sunday to form a government but not yet on who should be prime minister, nor most of the other main posts.

The slowness is not a bad thing if it does not become immobility. For all the pessimism that Pakistan has generated, its politicians are doing a reasonable job, in the three weeks since the elections, of trying to edge towards a democracy with a stronger Parliament.

Getting rid of Musharraf is what the two main parties intend by their first joint decision – to reappoint the 60-odd senior judges whom he sacked. The Supreme Court judges would probably say right away that Musharraf’s reelection in September was unconstitutional as he was still army chief. They could try to get him out within weeks. But while he is there, as President, he is responsible for convening the new National Assembly. The parties want that to be as soon as possible. He does not but his room for manoeuvre is limited, such is the pressure at home and abroad to get a move on.

Pressure seems to be having a helpful effect, too, on Asif Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, and since her assassination in December, head of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Her party, helped by a sympathy vote, won most of the seats in the assembly and can pick the prime minister. But in three weeks it has struggled to do so.

Q&A: the murder of Benazir Bhutto

Times South Asia Correspondent asks who had most to gain from killing the Pakistan People's Party leader

Multimedia

• Video: Bhutto assassinated

• Bhutto: the background, legacy and life

• Pictures: death of Benazir Bhutto

BACKGROUND

• Pakistan in chaos as Benazir Bhutto assassinated

• Who killed Benazir Bhutto? Main suspects

• Obituary: Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007

• Can democracy survive Bhutto killing?

Related Links

• Musharraf under threat as opposition unites

It appears that Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Zardari’s deputy, who ran the party during Bhutto’s eight-year exile, is out of the running. Mild, excessively well connected and a landlord from Sindh province, the Bhutto powerbase, he would have been a steadying influence but also possibly a challenge to the Bhutto clan.

When Zardari failed to bring him to Sunday’s crucial meeting with Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz branch), the other main party, it was widely assumed that he was no longer a contender. That role now goes to Ahmed Mukhtar, an industrialist from Punjab and a former minister in Bhutto’s Cabinet.

That would be a sensible move by the PPP. If it is ever to become a proper national party, rather than a passionate cult of the Bhutto family, drawing its power from Sindh’s feudal networks, then it needs a foothold in Punjab. That single province, two thirds of Pakistan by population and wealth, is almost a country in its own right (and one that works better than much of the rest). It is Sharif’s heartland, and the army’s, and is the key to delivering stable government.

After Sunday’s talks it seems that the Pakistan Muslim League may get the Finance Ministry. That is a dangerous gift to accept as the soaring cost of food and oil tops the new government’s problems. The division of responsibility between the two parties may inject conflict into that crucial domain.

The unclear ambitions of two small parties that might be in the coalition also add unpredictability. The Awami Nationalist Party, a Pashtun party and secular (up to a point), trounced Islamist parties in the west in the single most encouraging facet of the election. It and the Jamaiat Ulema-e-Islam, a leading Islamic party, could prove crucial in a decision, for example, to impeach Musharraf.

But uncertainty at this point is neither surprising nor bad news. Pakistan has come smoothly through elections that could have been far more violent. The questions it faces have been there for the 60 years since partition; no bad thing if it takes a few weeks to hazard some answers.

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