US President George W. Bush heralded the recent Pakistan election as a triumph for democracy. It was - but it was equally a defeat for Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, and for his main supporter, Mr Bush.
Democracy of the ballot box came back to Pakistan. There are too many corrupt, selfish and greedy players operating inside a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting problems to be confident that true democracy will take root in the troubled nation. But Pakistanis have clearly called for democracy in preference to either rule by the blood-stained mullahs or the American-funded military.
Mr Musharraf was one clear loser. In spite of the advantages of control of the state apparatus, the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam won only 38 seats, a long way behind the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of the Bhutto-Zardari family, (87 seats), and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, which supports former prime minister Nawaz Sharif (66 seats).
The two main winners, Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, and Sharif have agreed 'to work together to form a government. We intend to work together in our struggle for democracy'. Both have spoken of kicking out the president, and both have good reason: Sharif because Mr Musharraf overthrew him, alleging corruption, when he seized power in 1999; Mr Zardari because of the president's failure to protect his wife from assassination.
So it might look as if Mr Musharraf's goose is cooked. It is, nevertheless, a tricky issue: if the two men spend time trying to oust Mr Musharraf, that would distract them from the important business of government; if they ignore him as an irrelevance, his new powers allow him to throw out a government.
The other vital question is: how much power and influence has Washington lost by backing Mr Musharraf? For evidence of US arrogance in dealing with Pakistan, the policy options proposed by Daniel Markey - a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, the leading US think-tank - are very instructive. Until recently, Dr Markey was in charge of South Asia for the policy planning staff of the State Department, which is traditionally more diplomatic than other gung-ho American agencies.
