Islamabad: It will not be easy for President Pervez Musharraf to erase February 18 from his memory. It is his wife and daughter's birthday and he had jokingly remarked last month that Pakistan's general election was a birthday gift for them.
With the PML-Q, the party that backed Musharraf, biting the dust, the results of Monday's polls are a major setback for the President.
Interacting with the international media last month, Musharraf had pointed out that February 18 was the birthday of both his wife Sehba and daughter Ayla.
"After a degree of destabilisation that got compounded by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we are heading for elections again....I don't know (maybe) this is my birthday gift to them," he had said.
The birthday gift may have boomeranged on Musharraf, but Pakistanis are celebrating the fall of the "king's men" and looking forward to the "king's" exit.
"The voter has said it all. The verdict is clear people don't want the PML-Q. They don't want Musharraf," said Mehreen Syed, a university student who cast her vote for the first time on Monday.
"It's a Super Tuesday of sorts for Pakistan," Syed said, referring to the American elections.
The overworked and overbooked florists at Jinnah supermarket were grinning ear-to-ear.
"Yeh to Allah ka shukar hai (It is thanks to God)... we hope the new government will think about the poor and redress our problems," said Saad, a florist.
"The results are a referendum against the curbs on the judiciary and the media and the misery which the people of Pakistan faced for five long years," said Shaan, a taxi driver, who voted for the PML-N.
In cyberspace, bloggers kept busy posting "good news" through last night.
"It's a new morning in Pakistan. Nobody is sleeping.... Pakistanis want change, and they have voted for it. They want democracy. They want a free judiciary, and they want a free media. They want self-independence and they want political solutions to political problems," wrote blogger Sameer Shahryar.
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