LAHORE, Oct 12: Life has started returning slowly to routine in Lahore after the general election with people trying to figure out as to who will form the next federal government.

Attendance in schools and offices remained thin again and there was almost no business in the city’s numerous wholesale markets.

The governor, who had remained busy till the last day before the elections, presided over a meeting on the public health sector at the Governor’s House but preferred to stay indoors.

At the Civil Secretariat, officers continued to discuss the election results, speculating as to who would be able to form the federal government. They also debated the question whether or not the People’s Party Parliamentarians and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), would join the Paksitan Muslim League (Q) to form the federal government.

The chief secretary and the home secretary, accused of supporting the PML-Q before the polls, were conspicuous by their absence. It was rumoured that they were watching the developments taking place after the elections while sitting somewhere else.

While talking to Dawn, some senior officers said the election results reflected the overall impact of the government policies during the last three years.

Some other officials were of the view that the government would be formed jointly by the PML-Q, the PPP and the MMA. They saw chances of the MMA joining the government because the leadership of religious parties would prefer to gain something instead of starting a confrontation from the very outset.

A group of officers termed the results very good, saying that they had given the available top leadership to the assemblies. They said next parliament would be similar to that of the 1970 National Assembly as both had representation from all major political parties.

Comparing the two nationals assemblies, they said the 1970 National Assembly (NA) had written the new constitution while the new assembly would deal with the matter of re-writing the same constitution by the Musharraf government.

In 1970, the officials said, the assembly had struggled to overcome the crises created after the dismemberment of East Pakistan while the new assembly would deal with the impacts of the American attack on Afghanistan.

They said that in 1970, the NWFP government was headed by Maulana Mufti Mehmood and the new provincial assembly, too, would be formed by the religious parties.

They observed that the religious parties had been able to gain many seats in the national and provincial assemblies because of the absence of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.

The parties of both the leaders had roots all over the country and when circumstances forced them to stay away, the gaps were filled by forces which the establishment could find hard to tackle, they said and hoped that the new NA would be able to give intellectual output to the country because of the presence of leaders like Qazi Hussain, Farooq Leghari, Imran Khan, Dr Tahirul Qadri and others. But the Punjab assembly would not be able to follow suit because of the absence of any such personality here, they added.