The PML-N is all set to face defeat in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir election in the wake of brewing internal rifts, cracks in the election alliance and rupture of the rightist vote bank. Although, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif gathered massive crowds during his five-day election campaign in AJK, political experts forecast PML-N defeat owing to a lop-sided poll strategy. Foreseeing possible defeat, a majority of PML-N leader accuse the PPP-led coalition of massive pre-poll rigging, but senior party leaders attributed the expected debacle to unwise advisers of the Sharif brothers.
Sources privy to AJK election campaign told Pakistan Today that Sharifs’ advisers were bent on playing havoc with the Sharif brothers in AJK, where the PML-N is contesting election for the first time.
“Barristar Sultan Mehmood, a potential candidate in AJK, was really interested to join the PML-N and held many parleys with Nawaz. He also received a green signal from the party. But some ace party leaders poisoned Nawaz against Sultan and he eventually shook hands with the PPP,” sources said. They said PML-N ticket holder Arshad Ghazi LA-3(Mirpur city 3 ), who was fielded against Barristan Sultan Mehmood, was also likely to break away from the party after Nawaz cancelled his public meeting in Ghazi’s constituency. Disgruntled, Ghazi held a conference and announced to return the PML-N ticket, the sources added. Another factor damaging the PML-N’s position in AJK polls was grouping making headway within the party. PML-N AJK chief Sardar Sikandar Hiyat Khan and AJK president Raja Farooq Haider are pampering two groups within the party.
“PML-N voters are in state of quandary over the reports that the PML-N and PPP have hammered out a deal on the 41 assembly seats, and the former would be losing in six constituencies,” he claimed.
A senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami said the PML-N had alliance with the JI on two seats. Expressing his misgiving, he said the PML-N had tricked the JI. Nawaz allowed two party leaders, who were not awarded party tickets under seat adjustment with the JI, to contest elections as independent candidates on the same seats. “We know how to pay him in the same coin,” he added.
A close aide to the Sharifs said the Muslim Conference, a strong group in AJK polls, had ideological friendship with the PML-N, as both tilted towards the right since long. Most of the MC leaders, including Sardar Sikdardar Hayat Khan and Raja Farooq Haider, had joined the PML-N. Despite the long association, the PML-N abstained from formin an alliance with the conference, he said.
However, PML-N central information secretary expressed overwhelming optimism about the party’s chances in the upcoming polls, saying it would emerge as the single largest party in AJK.
He alleged that there would be no legal and constitutional status of the AJK polls, as 70 percent of the voter lists were bogus, but the party would not only fight the legal war against the pre-poll rigging, but its candidates would also fully participate in the contest. The PML-N leader said the PML-N had stayed away from the Muslim Conference as it joined Musharraf and then the PPP.
