Pakistan Muslim League (PML)-Likeminded Secretary General Humayun Akhtar Khan said on Sunday his party’s President Senator Salim Saifullah’s negotiations with the PML-Nawaz (PML-N) had been successful and soon both parties’ committees would hold talks on settling modalities of their future course of cooperation.
“Though there emerged no immediate outcome of the PML-Likeminded delegation’s meeting with (PML-N chief) Nawaz Sharif, it was an ice-breaker meeting between two sides… soon after the PML-N’s internal elections, both parties’ committees will meet to advance talks aimed at strengthening cooperation,” he said in an exclusive talk with Pakistan Today.
He said President Asif Ali Zardari had also tasked Senate Chairman Farooq H Naek with holding talks with the PML-Likeminded. “We have constituted a two-member committee comprising Senators Ghaffar Qureshi and Gulshan Saeed to hold talks with Naek,” he said, without elaborating on the agenda of the talks.
Khan proposed that the defence cabinet committee’s structure be expanded through executive order or simple legislation (as needed) and the opposition leader as well as provincial chief ministers be made its members. Asking the government to appoint a chairman for the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) without delay, he said the watchdog should be made powerful enough to apprehend any person from any stratum of society.
Khan said the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) had been wooing the PML-Likeminded senators and National Assembly members “but not even a single parliamentarian from our party defected to the PPP”. He said time had lent credence to the reasons for the PML-Likeminded members’ defection from the PML-Q. “We had reservations with the politics of dynasty and had also claimed that the leadership of the PML-Q was serving its own vested interests… Now our claims have been verified… the Chaudhrys joined the PPP-led coalition government to serve themselves,” he said. He said the PML-Likeminded was fast gaining ground in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “Our party has the men who know good governance… the PML-Likeminded is the only party which has come up with a crystal clear road map for resolving the people’s problems,” he said.
He said the PML-Likeminded’s efforts for the unification of various factions of the Muslim League were bearing fruit. “PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif too has started realising the importance of the unification of Muslim League’s factions… The steering committee of MML under its Convener Hamid Nasir Chattha is efficiently paving the way for the reunification of the Muslim League,” he added. Responding to a query, he said the PPP would complete its five-year term. “I do not see short term polls and the coalition government is most likely to complete its tenure… I think the PML-N also wants the government to complete its term,” he said.
