Elahi’s ‘win-Punjab’ plan vetoed

The political interests of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have forced Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q)’s central leader Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi to shelve his plan of making a PPP-PML-Q coalition government in Punjab after overthrowing the government of the Sharifs, as President Asif Ali Zardari, contrary to the Chaudhrys’ desires, wants to avert any extreme confrontation with the Sharifs before the upcoming Senate elections scheduled for next year.
A source in the PML-Q told Pakistan Today that President Zardari had vetoed Elahi’s plan of dislodging the weak-in-numbers PML-N government in Punjab by winning back the loyalties of the PML-Q dissident MPAs, currently part of the Unification Bloc.
POWER-SHARING DEAL: He said to form a PPP-PML-Q coalition government in Punjab was part of the power-sharing deal struck between the two parties in April this year and they had also planned to launch the offensives against the Punjab government after the budget. “It had been decided between the two sides that Senior Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi would sit in his camp-office at State Guest House in Lahore to muster support for in-house change, primarily by wooing his party’s dissident MPAs of the Unification Bloc… it was also decided that the prime minister’s special funds for development projects of the parliamentarians would also be used to lure the PML-Q rebel MPAs,” he added.
The source said that in the final stage of the power-sharing talked between the PPP and the PML-Q, President Zardari and Elahi were not on the same page on the issue of forming a coalition government in Punjab, but on t
he insistence of the PML-Q, President Zardari had given go-ahead to the Chaudhrys, asking them to first disassociate the Unification Bloc from the PML-N because without it the ‘win Punjab plan’ would only make a crash landing.
“Now, President Zardari has again barred the PML-Q leaders from making efforts to overthrow the PML-N’s Punjab government… the president thinks the move would help the PML-N to win sympathy in the streets and any possible mass movement launched by the ‘furious’ PML-N could destabilise the federal government and if the PML-N, in an extreme step, opted to resign en masse from the assemblies to protest the fall of its provincial government, the federal government too would collapse consequently, thus depriving the PPP from the rare chance of winning majority seats in upcoming Senate elections,” he added.
A source in the PPP said President Zardari had told a number of leaders from his party and the PML-Q that winning the Senate elections was his top priority.
ELAHI HELL-BENT: on the other hand, the men close to the Chaudhrys claimed that Elahi was hell-bent on overthrowing the government of the Sharifs. “In all meetings that took place between the two sides during and after the power-sharing deal, Pervaiz Elahi is always insistent upon launching a movement to bring in-house change in the Punjab Assembly,” he added.
Meanwhile, PPP leaders and MPAs from Punjab are constantly putting pressure on the PPP’s top command to go for a final showdown against Shahbaz Sharif’s government in Punjab.
Extremely annoyed, in a recent meeting PPP MPAs also asked Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to freeze the development funds of the PML-N parliamentarians in retaliation to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s policy of not entertaining opposition party MPAs in Punjab. Background discussions with PML-Q MPAs of the Unification Bloc also reveal that the PPP and the PML-Q are not interested, at least for the time being, in forming a coalition government in Punjab.
When asked whether there were any serious efforts on the ground in Punjab to dislodge the government of the Sharifs by the PPP or the Chaudhrys, Dr Tahir Ali Javed, parliamentary leader of the Unification Bloc, said: “No, there are no such signs on the ground. Neither the PPP nor the Chaudhrys have approached any member of the Unification Bloc… I think they will never try any in-house change in the Punjab Assembly.”