ISLAMABAD, Dec 17: It’s not all gloom for the country’s two main opposition parties in a US think-tank’s survey which they rejected initially, because, if the findings are reliable, they together can beat the ruling coalition in the next elections.

Spokesmen for both the People's Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) on Saturday dismissed the International Republican Institute (IRI) survey as baseless mainly because it rated President Pervez Musharraf more popular than their exiled leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

But a day after the first report of the findings appeared in Dawn, at least the PPP seemed to have second thoughts about the survey conducted in September by a research wing of the US Republican Party, and claimed credit for no mean ratings of the two parties despite the exile and alleged persecution of their leadership.

“It depends on how you look at things,” PPP secretary-general Raja Pervez Ashraf said, a day after another party spokesman disputed the survey’s finding about President Musharraf’s personal popularity and challenged the general to give up as army chief and then contest a parliamentary seat against a PPP nominee.

“We see it like this, that a party whose leadership is out of the country and facing a media trial for nine to 10 years could still be rated at this level,” Mr Ashraf said about the PPP and its leader.

But he declined to totally reject or accept the veracity of the findings, which put the president’s popularity --rated at a scale of one to five -- at 3.47 points compared to Ms Bhutto’s 3.31 points, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s 3.18 points and Mr Sharif’s 3.17 points.

Though such surveys have rarely reflected the correct public mood in Pakistan mainly because of the country's low literacy rate, the PPP and PML-N could find something to cheer about even in the IRI rating of parties -- despite being placed behind the ruling Pakistan Muslim League at the national level.

Asked for preferences if the elections were held ‘next week’ after being surveyed, respondents put the popularity of the PML-Q and its major coalition ally Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) at 27.4 per cent and 3.1 per cent, respectively.

But their total of 30.5 per cent in popularity would be less than the combined total of 35.8 per cent of the PPP (22 per cent) and PML-N (13.8 per cent) and could make a difference if the two opposition parties forged an electoral alliance or made seat adjustments in the next elections between themselves and with their smaller regional allies in the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD).

A majority of 53 per cent, against 20 per cent, wanted the ARD to contest the election from one platform while the survey gave no such finding about the ruling coalition nor reckoned the breakaway PPP faction, the People’s Party Patriots.

Raja Ashraf felt happy with the survey’s findings that a majority of 70 per cent wanted Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif to be allowed back into the country to contest the elections, 52 per cent saw polls to be more transparent if held under a neutral caretaker government compared with 36 per cent wanting them under President Musharraf.

“If Musharraf had been so popular, then why the majority did not have confidence in him (to hold elections)?" he asked, using the finding to contradict the one about the general’s popularity graph.

Things could still be much different if the ARD agreed to an electoral arrangement with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), whose popularity was put at 5.2 per cent.

And yet the survey's most surprising finding was a 46 per cent ‘yes’ response -- against 43 per cent ‘no’ -- for Pakistan's continuing cooperation with the US in the so-called ‘war on terror’.