ISLAMABAD – In an apparently vengeful response to the newfound rapport between the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) that could threaten Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s government in Punjab, the PML-Nawaz has launched efforts to create another forward bloc in the PML-Q in both houses of parliament on the pattern of the Unification Bloc in Punjab. A source in the PML-Q told Pakistan Today that some top leaders of the PML-N had contacted PML-Q National Assembly members in the backdrop of a PML-Q delegation’s meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday night.
“The PML-N leaders asked the PML-Q parliamentarians, particularly those who were never associated with the PPP in their political career, that their past affiliations with the Muslim League demanded them to disassociate themselves from the Chaudhrys as they had shaken hands with Zardari,” said a PML-Q lawmaker, who wished to remain unnamed. A PML-N leader, who also asked not to be named, said his party had no reservations with accepting many PML-Q leaders and parliamentarians into its folds except a few marked men who had inflicted severe damage on the Sharifs during former president Musharraf’s regime.
“We have plans to win the support of those PML-Q MNAs who are considered ‘elect-able’ and can prove an asset for the party in the next polls,” he said.
The success of PML-N’s move to create a pro-PML-N forward bloc in the PML-Q in the National Assembly can prove to be a fatal blow to the Chaudhrys as they are already facing a mutiny in the lower house of parliament. Senator Pervaiz Rashid of the PML-N said it was the PML-Q MNAs and senators who were contacting the PML-N and expressing interest in joining the party. “We are not creating any forward bloc in the PML-Q in parliament and we did not create the Unification Bloc in the Punjab Assembly,” he said. Rashid said that the PML-N would decide whether to accept the PML-Q defectors on a case-to-case basis.
“We have to scrutinise their past deeds and future ability to stick with the commitments they are making to us,” he said. PML-Q Information Secretary Kamil Ali Agha said that no MNAs or senators of his party could be lured by the PML-N as they were all mature politicians who fully understood the PML-N’s “dirty politics”. He denied that his party’s parliamentarians were contacting the PML-N to join up.
