ISLAMABAD – Lack of trust in one another remained a major hurdle, as the opposition parties, which gathered at a dinner hosted by JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman on Friday night, failed to chalk out a clear strategy against the PPP-led government despite agreeing that it had not been able to resolve any of the several crises faced by the country. The MQM’s presence in the brain-storming session was considered a significant development, but other parties suspected the sincerity of the PPP’s coalition partner. The dinner was attended by top leaders of the PML-N, PML-Q, PML-Q Likeminded, MQM and the JI, but they could not agree on forming any formal or non-formal alliance of opposition parties.
Discussions with the leaders of these parties who attended the dinner suggested that they agreed that the government had failed to handle the situation and the problems had increased manifold. “No leader of any party spoke out his heart and proposed any plan to send the PPP government packing … everyone expected others to take the lead,” a source who attended the meeting said.
Another source told Pakistan Today that the participation of MQM’s Farooq Sattar in the dinner stunned the PML-N and PML-Q. “In the presence of a leader from the MQM, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan kept quiet and did not disclose his party’s future course of action against the government. The PML-N’s distrust against the JUI-F and the PML-Q was apparently another reason of Nisar not sharing the PML-N plans,” he added. During the meeting, PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Secretary General Mushahid Hussain Sayed did not take up the issue of PML-N’s support to the Unification Bloc in Punjab with Nisar. The source said the participation of Nisar in the dinner also irked the PML-Q leaders, as it foiled their plan of forming a grand alliance of likeminded parties with the MQM, JUI-F, PTI, JI and others against the PML-N in the wake of the Sharifs’ patronage to PML-Q rebels. The source said all leaders agreed that Bhatti’s murder was a complete failure of intelligence and security agencies for which the government should take responsibility.
He said no one proposed the idea of mid-term polls, but there was a consensus that all parties will adopt a uniform policy on national issues like terrorism, economic downturn, Raymond Davis, price hike, energy crisis in the future by keeping close contact,” he said, adding that the contact would be strengthened through hosting such meetings. The leaders from opposition parties decided that the opposition in the Senate would give a tough time to the government, as the position of the opposition in the Upper House had strengthened after the JUI-F joined the opposition.
