ISLAMABAD, March 23: The new National Assembly will put President Pervez Musharraf’s political opponents in power on Monday after more than eight years of exclusion when it elects Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) nominee Makhdoom Yusuf Raza Gilani as prime minister in a contest between unequals.

The joint opposition, with former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi as its alternative candidate after Dr Farooq Sattar of the MQM withdrew from the race, will put up only a token fight as the remnants of the president’s political fortress continue to crumble after being battered in the general elections.

Mr Gilani, 55, who was named as the candidate of the PPP-led coalition of election winners on Saturday after weeks of suspense and a power struggle, will be the first PPP premier after the party remained out of power for 12 years and the first anti-Musharraf head of government in eight and a half years.

An all-powerful Musharraf sidelined both the mainstream PPP and Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N through a policy seen designed to trample democracy and brought the situation to a head last year with crackdowns on the judiciary and the media whose backlash contributed to a humiliating defeat of his loyalists in the Feb 18 vote.

Monday’s prime ministerial election will be an outcome of years of struggle by anti-Musharraf forces some of whose next political targets include the restoration some 60 judges of superior courts sacked under his controversial Nov 3, 2007 emergency, clipping his powers to sack a prime minister, dissolve the National Assembly and appointment of armed forces’ chiefs and provincial governors at his discretion, and possibly get him out of the way through impeachment by parliament for his alleged violations of the Constitution.

Mr Gilani, who has vowed on the eve of his election as prime minister to be the “servant of the people” rather than a ruler and formulate his policies in consultation with all coalition allies, can be sure of more than two-thirds majority vote in the 342-seat house on Monday.

The PPP nominees for the house speaker and deputy speaker polled more than two-thirds of votes in their election by secret ballot on Wednesday, and Mr Gilani, despite the open vote through a parliamentary method of division, is likely to get much more after Sunday’s decision by pro-Musharraf Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) for its 25 members to vote for him unconditionally while sitting on opposition benches with formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q and some other minor groups.

But despite this massive parliamentary support, a question mark remains about whether Mr Gilani will serve for the full five-year term or will only keep the seat warm until his effective selector PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari decides to take the job himself after getting himself elected as a National Assembly member in a by-election.

Saturday’s statement by Mr Zardari announcing the party candidate did not touch this question, and Mr Gilani also told reporters after filing his nomination papers on Sunday that he would serve in the office “as long as my party wants” him to.

The PPP will have to clarify the issue unless it wants to go through another period of damaging suspense and speculation like more than a month of dilly-dallying over the nomination of its prime ministerial candidate before dumping party vice-chairman and its most senior parliamentarian Makhdoom Amin Fahim.

Mr Fahim, the Makhdoom of Hala in Sindh and the man who led the party at home for nine years of self-exile by assassinated party leader Benazir Bhutto, has acquiesced to the choice of another Makhdoom from Multan, but seems bitter at the way he was treated by Mr Zardari.

It is yet to be seen whether Mr Fahim will retain the presidentship of the PPP’s electoral arm of PPP Parliamentarians, which can make him the party parliamentary leader in the National Assembly, or eventually give it up.