ISLAMABAD — The winners of Pakistan's elections on Wednesday demanded that President Pervez Musharraf convene parliament immediately in a joint show of strength against the embattled US ally.
Slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's widower and former premier Nawaz Sharif made the demand at the first meeting of MPs from a coalition that trounced the president's backers in the polls on February 18.
"We inform Mr Musharraf that we are not prepared to wait for a single day more for the assembly to be convened," Sharif said, questioning why Pakistan's election commission had not yet released official results.
Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N and the nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) are now close to the two-thirds majority they need to impeach Musharraf.
"We must fight together, we must defeat dictatorship," added Sharif, the man toppled by Musharraf in a military coup in 1999.
Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widowed husband, said it was time for the new parliament to assemble and restore democracy in "homage" to her assassination in a suicide attack at an election rally in December.
"We are united together to empower the parliament and finish the establishment once and for all," Zardari said.
Security was heavy for the meeting, with sniffer dogs and dozens of police guarding the hotel where the 89 lawmakers from the PPP, 67 from Sharif's PML-N, 10 from the ANP and several independents met.
The coalition has been wooing several independent MPs in a bid to gain the two-thirds majority, even if it is just to increase the pressure on Musharraf, a bulwark in US efforts to tackle Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The coalition gave no clear statement on whether they would seek Musharraf's impeachment, which local media reports say is a source of division between the coalition members.
A second option for the parties is Sharif's earlier suggestion -- that judges sacked by Musharraf under emergency rule in November should decide on the president's fate by ruling on the legality of his re-election last year.
Election Commission Secretary Kanwar Dilshad told AFP earlier that the election results would be officially announced on March 1.
"We are in the process of compiling these results, the bulk of them have been announced and only a few remain," Dilshad told AFP.
Official sources said the first meeting of the new parliament is likely to take place in the second week of March.
Local media reports say Washington, Pakistan's key economic and military backer, is trying to persuade them to give Musharraf, a key US ally in the "war on terror", a smooth exit from power.
US Senator Joe Biden, one of three senators who observed the elections, said on Sunday that the political parties should not focus on old grudges and should "give him (Musharraf) a graceful way to move."