No serious effort is underway to replace the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q)’s parliamentary leader in the Senate Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, as cracks within the rebel group have led to the failure of the move, a reliable source told Pakistan Today on Wednesday.
Background interactions with the leaders of the PML-Likeminded have revealed that contrary to media reports, no proposal was under consideration to throw out Shujaat as the group lacked consensus and most of the senators lacked the courage and political will to go against the Chaudhrys without the full support of PML-Nawaz chief Nawaz Sharif, who has yet to give the rebels the green light for open dissidence.
The source told Pakistan Today that Senator Haroon Akhtar had made a move to get an application signed from all the rebel senators, but only three senators apart from himself, namely Salim Saifullah Khan, Ghaffar Qureshi and Gulshan Saeed, had signed it.
The source said Senator Saifullah – chief of the Likeminded group – was reluctant to make the move after his recent meeting with President Asif Ali Zardari, who had urged him not to support any move against Shujaat, who is a coalition partner in the ruling alliance. “However, despite reluctance of Saifullah, Haroon Akhtar Khan has contacted Senator Jamal Khan Leghari and asked him to sign the letter. but he refused and said he would only sign the letter once all other senators of the party had signed it,” the source said.
