ISLAMABAD, Oct 11: The country on Friday seemed headed for a coalition government as no political party won a majority in the National Assembly after Thursday’s low-turnout election that produced four major forces to vie for power.

The Pakistan Muslim League (Q) emerged as the largest single party, bagging 76 of the 269 seats for which the results were announced by Friday mid-night, out of 272 general seats contested on Thursday, but fell far short of a simple majority.

A total of 121 seats were won by three major parties: People’s Party Parliamentarians — the electoral formation of self-exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) — (62), Muttahida Majlis- i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six religio-political parties (51) and PML(N) of the exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif (14).

Independents won 26 seats followed by MQM (13), National Alliance (11) and the rest by other smaller groups.

As the Election Commission was yet to complete an unusually slow release of unofficial results amid more charges of vote- rigging, a guessing game started about which parties could align to form a government and who could be the next prime minister for whom President Musharraf has promised to hand over chief executive’s powers by Nov 1.

Political sources said there was bound to be a presidential role in the formation of the next civilian government, whose emergence will only partially restore democracy because Gen Musharraf, who is supported by PML (Q) and its allies, will continue to be the president and army chief for five more years.

But they said the president would face a hard choice of whether to seek an accord with the PPP and the PML (N), as he does not see eye to eye with their leaders or with the MMA bitterly opposed to his alliance with the US-led coalition against war on terrorism.

The MMA sprung the greatest surprise in the election, sweeping the NWFP and also headed for a dominance in Balochistan.

Although the PPP fell short of the predictions made by at least two pre-poll opinion polls last month, including one by the British Broadcasting Corporation, that it will gain a narrow lead, it saw the election as a victory for anti-government forces.

But the party, which had accused the government of engaging in pre-poll rigging, voiced allegations of manipulations of results even after the poll ended.

“We are surprised that the announcement (of results) was delayed by seven hours giving rise to suspicions that already stuffed ballot boxes were also included in the count in the dead of the night,” PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn.

“The regime’s desire to have a hung parliament and its efforts in this regard have borne fruit,” he said.

“The victory of the religious and extremist parties has confirmed the PPP’s assertion that marginalization of mainstream political parties would strengthen extremists,” he said.

The independents will play an important role in the future government-making efforts, as a new law requires them to join any party within three days after the notification of the official result, which the Election Commission has promised to do within five days of the polling.

There is no word yet from the PPP about a visit to London by party leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim to consult Benazir Bhutto. He left for London on Thursday when even the results of the polling had not started arriving.

In an important election-related move, Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan and the party’s chief for the NWFP resigned from their offices on Friday after ANP’s defeat in the elections.