ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid has offered the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) its services in Punjab to inflict political damage to the PML-N.
A source in the PML-Q told Pakistan Today that in Friday’s meeting between the leadership of the PML-Q and the MQM at nine zero, Shujaat Hussain asked MQM leaders to gear up their political activities in Punjab and assured them the PML-Q’s full logistic support against the PML-N.
Addressing a joint press conference after the meeting, Shujaat and Mushahid Hussain also announced that the PML-Q would facilitate the MQM in Punjab in setting up its party structure. “As the Chaudhrys, despite consistent tirade against the Sharif brothers, have failed to gain ground in Punjab, they want to pitch ‘the aggressive Muttahida’ against the PML-N government,” the source said.
It said that the recent exchange of abuses between the PML-N and the MQM leaders had also provided the Chaudhrys a space to advance their agenda of pitching both parties against each other in a battlefield to serve their vested interests.
A PML-Q central leader seeking not to be named said during his rule in Punjab, Pervaiz Elahi had ordered police officers to beat the MQM wherever they were found and must not allow the party to hold public processions in any district of the province.
Kamil Ali Agha, PML-Q information secretary, said his party was not trying to pitch the MQM against the PML-N in Punjab. Asked to comment on the use of coercive force by Elahi in his tenure against the MQM, Agha said, “It was a false impression created by the PML-N during previous regime.
The PML-Q has always tried to bring regional political parties in the national mainstream.” Commenting on the PML-Q’s offered support to the MQM, Senator Pervaiz Rashid of the PML-N said forces which worked under dictator for twelve years were again uniting against democratic forces in the country.
“The PML-Q’s Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi curbed the MQM in Punjab during his regime, but on the other hand the PML-N government has always facilitated and will continue facilitating a political party to carry on its political activities in the province,” he said, adding the PML-Q and the MQM were two government “parties working under the thumb of Rehman Malik”.
