With rumours of the possible replacement of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani with a Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) man abuzz in the capital, PML-Nawaz (PML-N) President Nawaz Sharif felt no hesitation in embracing thorough-bred Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Envar Baig, just as he had done the PPP’s Shah Mehmood Qureshi – the former foreign minister – at his Raiwand residence, sending a clear message to the PPP that he had decided to hollow it out from within.
Rumours of a new prime minister gained more weight when Gilani himself stated in the National Assembly last week that he had never ever said in the last three years that he would complete his five-year term. “I always stated that this parliament will complete its tenure,” said Gilani. The rumour-mongers, without sharing any concrete piece of information, claim that the real decision makers in the coalition government had somewhat lost their trust in a ‘pliant’ premier who they believe is unable to serve political interests of the PPP in a pre-election scenario that demands a firebrand anti-Sharif man in the seat of the chief executive of the country.
The PPP leaders on the other hand, rebut such rumours asserting that some vested interests, particularly from the new coalition partner – the PML-Q – were behind this propaganda campaign. “The Chaudhrys might be trying to convince President (Asif Ali) Zardari that Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi is a good candidate because of his strong hatred towards the Sharifs and also because his familiarity with the political mindset of estranged bedfellows could inflict more damage on the PML-N than a soft-spoken Gilani ahead of the next general elections… but Zardari’s trust on the Chaudhrys has not reached such a level that he would hand over the reins of power to those who not only betrayed Nawaz Sharif after the 1999 coup but also distanced themselves from the founder of PML-Q – Pervez Musharraf – when he had passed his shelf-life in 2008,” said a PPP leader, who asked not to be identified by name.
A number of PPP leaders, after losing trust in the top command of the party – particularly annoyed with ‘Zardari’s one man show’ – are exploring new ways to keep their relevance intact in the country’s political arena. Two from this camp of PPP’s disgruntled men – Baig and Qureshi – have succeeded in making inroads in Nawaz’s Muslim League though the custodian of Shah Rukn-e-Alam shrine has yet not exposed his future course of politics. Satisfied with fractures appearing in the PPP folds, the PML-N leaders bet in private sittings that many beads from the PPP’s string would fall in the days to come.
Frustrated with political isolation, PML-N President Nawaz Sharif, who once used to say with emotional emphasis that his party’s doors were permanently closed to aides of Pervez Musharraf, now intends to mend fences with the PML-Likeminded and others dissident members of the PML-Q.
This new relation of trust between the Sharifs and PML-Q’s breakaway faction haunts the Chaudhrys and President Zardari, but very little as they know that the alliance between erstwhile political companions would do but negligible loss to the PPP-PML-Q seat adjustment formula cunningly crafted to uproot the PML-N from its stronghold of Punjab in the next general elections.
The PML-Q leaders allege that various central leaders of the PML-N are nowadays wooing PML-Q parliamentarians.
“After forming independent bloc of PML-Q senators under the command of Senator Tariq Azeem, they (the Sharifs) are now approaching our MNAs and the meeting of Nawaz Sharif with PML-Q MNA Chaudhry Asim Nazir is ample proof of PML-N’s politics of producing turncoats,” said a PML-Q leader. On the other hand, PML-Q dissident leaders – whether they belong to the Unification Bloc of the Punjab Assembly or the independent bloc of the Senate – reply that they shook hands with Nawaz after losing trust in the PML-Q leadership and its policies.
There is another tale of mistrust in which, while restoring local government ordinance 2001 in only Karachi and Hyderabad – the unquestionable power bases of the MQM – the PPP’s top command apparently told their workers and leaders in rural Sindh that they had yet not become able to serve the masses through local government system, hence ‘mini-viceroys’ (commissioners) were indispensable to call the shots in the areas densely populated by PPP loyalists.
The revival of Musharraf’s local government system in only MQM’s strongholds clearly indicates that from President Zardari to Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah, all PPP leaders trust more in English-speaking bureaucrats than PPP’s men who could, otherwise, serve the people at the grassroots if the local government ordinance 2001 were imposed in the whole of Sindh with necessary amendments.
After being shattered with bullets fired in rage, the trust between the PPP and the MQM is getting new life under fresh pledges of peace and reconciliation being made from both sides, but no one knows when this reborn trust will meet another natural calamity. Meanwhile, the rapprochement between the PPP and the MQM has developed mistrust between the PPP and the ANP, as the former summoned an emergency meeting in Karachi on Sunday to develop a strategy on the restoration of local government system in Karachi and Hyderabad.