Lahore

As a referendum on President Pervez Musharraf's eight years in power, Pakistan's national and provincial elections were damning. His ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) was routed, especially in the majority Punjab Province. And the coalition of religious parties he cobbled together to face down national and secular parties in the restive North West Frontier Province (NWFP) was itself voted down after five years of "Islamic" government. The civilian cloth Musharraf and Washington had used to cover the nakedness of his military rule was blown away on February 18, like dead leaves in a gale.

Many saw the vote as a posthumous revenge for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, since her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) won a plurality of seats in the new assemblies. But the reading is glib. True, the rural poor in her native Sindh Province swept the PPP to shore on a tide of anger at her murder in December. The PPP also picked up seats in the NWFP and Baluchistan Province, raised by the same swell. Yet the tide ebbed in the political heartlands, the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The PPP did not win Pakistan's urban capitals. Why?

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