All the King's men gone in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Many pro-Musharraf heavyweights were toppled by the massive PPP-PML(N) sweep in Pakistan's general election, with the major casualties being ruling PML-(Q) Chairman Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain himself as well as Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, dubbed the Lalu Prasad of Pakistan.
     
Speaker of the National Assembly Choudhry Amir Hussain, ex-speaker Hamid Nasir Chattha and National Reconstruction Bureau chairman and former minister Daniyal Aziz were the other main losers in their respective constituencies.
     
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a former minister and former spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf who has won seven consecutive times from his Rawalpindi constituency, could not continue his winning spree and lost both his seats to PML-N's Makhdoom Javed Hashmi and MMA turncoat Mohammad Hanif Abbasi.
     
Other losers included Humayun Akhtar, Ejazul Haq, Dr Sher Afgan and Liaqat Jatoi, all ministers in the previous Shaukat Aziz Government.
    
President Pervez Musharraf's personal friend and ex-defence minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal was defeated in his hometown while former Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri was toppled in Kasur by another ex-foreign minister Sardar Assef Ahmed Ali.
    
For PML-Q chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, it was second time that he had lost from both the constituencies he contested in. He was earlier defeated during the 1993 elections in both seats in Gujrat.
    
Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar twice defeated him from Gujrat, first time in 1993 and now in the 2008 elections.
     
Among other key figures of the PML-Q government who lost were former minister of state for finance Omar Ayub Khan, who was defeated by PML-N's Sardar Mushtaq Hussain in Haripur, and former minister Zubaida Jalal who had contested as an
independent candidate and was defeated in her home constituency of Kech-Gwadar by Yaqoob Bizenjo of the Balochistan National Party-Awami.