PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman on Thursday agreed on evolving a national consensus to form a government at the Centre.
Asif Zardari on Thursday evening held an hour-long meeting with Maulana Fazlur Rehman at the residence of Senator Dr Talha. Ex-NWFP chief minister Akram Khan Durrani and Maulana Muhammad Khan Shirani were also present while Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Yousuf Raza Gillani were accompanying the party’s co-chairman during the meeting.
“We have agreed to evolving a national consensus and to talk further on the formation of a national government,” said Fazlur Rehman while talking informally to newsmen after the meeting.
He suggested that a national government should be formed and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal was also ready to play its role in this connection. “What we want is the supremacy of parliament and complete adherence to the 1973 Constitution,” Fazl maintained.
The Maulana said the mandate given to political parties should be respected. He expressed the hope that the coming government would be able to meet the challenges being faced by the country. In his brief chat with newsmen, Asif Zardari said the nation would soon hear good news of a national government at the Centre.
Caretaker Information Minister Nisar A Memon has said that deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and three lawyers are under custody and are not being released due to law and order situation in the country
Memon said that after taking oath as a caretaker government they decided to release around 5,000 detainees and the decision was implemented within the next ten days except the release of three people who were kept house arrest due to law and order situation.
Winding up the debate in the Senate on political situation in the country, Memon said that the caretaker government had fulfilled its constitutional mandate by making all-out efforts to ensure free, fair and transparent elections.
“We dispensed our legal, national and constitutional duty to hold free, fair and transparent polls paving the way for smooth transition of power and strengthening of democracy,” he said. He said the government provided full support to the Election Commission for holding the elections in a transparent way that has been accepted by the international community.
He said the government did not interfere in the election process and ensured independent participation of all the political forces and allowed even the exiled political leaders to come back and take part in the election process.
President Pervez Musharraf’s political allies have started coming out of the impact of their shocking defeat in the Feb 18 general elections and are putting their act together to defend him with determination.
Former federal minister Sarwar Yar Mohammad Rind, who won a provincial assembly seat from Balochistan but lost his bid for the National Assembly seat, told The News after meeting the president that he felt “not for a second” that Musharraf was resigning.
To a question, Rind said the president was in high morale. “I found no difference in his high spirits during my lengthy meeting compared to my previous sessions with him as minister.” He said Musharraf told him that he respected the electoral mandate given to different political parties. He noted Musharraf’s “farsighted attitude” for Pakistan, especially Balochistan.
Rind’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q), which emerged as the largest party in the Balochistan Assembly, wants to form the government in the province in collaboration with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and the independents. If this combination emerges as a unified force, it would form a simple majority in the provincial legislature.
PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday said as a result of the Feb 18 elections, the establishment stood weakened and it was incumbent upon all the political forces to strengthen the democratic institutions so that dictatorship could never be able to rear its head again.
“In order to end the monopoly of the establishment, all the PPP workers whether those who won or those who lost seats in the polls had a crucial role to play,” Zardari said this while chairing a meeting of the losing candidates of the national and provincial assemblies from the NWFP and Balochistan at the Zardari House.
The meeting took stock of the political situation in these provinces and analysed how and where the elections were stolen. The meeting also discussed ways to stop election manipulation by the establishment in future. Addressing the meeting Asif Zardari said that it went to the credit of the party workers that despite rigging in selective constituencies the party emerged not only as the largest party at the Centre but also had its candidates elected in all the provinces of the country.
The party co-chairman said that the People’s Party would formulate polices in the light of the advice of its members and that was why he had called these consultative meetings to benefit from the advice of as many party workers as possible.
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) brokered an agreement on Thursday to form governments at the Centre and the provincial levels and to sort out the modalities for the reinstatement of judiciary in parliament.
“We have decided to work together and move together for the future of the democracy in the country and to strengthen parliament,” said Co-Chairman PPP Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N Quaid Nawaz Sharif while addressing a joint press conference here on Thursday evening at the Zardari House after holding two-hour-long talks.
PPP Senior Vice Chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim, opposition leader in the Senate Mian Raza Rabbani, PPP Secretary General Jehangir Badar and Information Secretary Sherry Rehman assisted Asif Ali Zardari while PML-N President Mian Shahbaz Sharif, Chaudhry Nisar Ali, Senator Ishaq Dar and Khawaja Asif assisted Mian Nawaz Sharif.
In the post-election government formation phase, Asif Ali Zardari’s first love continues to be the PML-N though both the presidential camp and Washington are pressurising him to go for an otherwise awkward coalition with the PML-Q and other pro-Musharraf forces.
Background interviews reveal that Asif Ali Zardari has been offered governments at the Centre and in at least three of the four provinces if he distances himself from the Nawaz League. However, he told those who approached him that he did not consider the Q-League a political entity. Despite reservations of some of the PPP leaders from the Punjab against the N-League in the central executive committee of the party that met here in Islamabad on Wednesday, Zardari endorsed the idea of making a coalition government with the political parties like the PML-N, ANP, etc. Asif Ali Zardari while talking to this correspondent on Wednesday night also expressed his confidence that the two top-most popular parties – PPP and PML-N – would sort out the issues to make a workable coalition, both at the Centre and in the provinces.
Although, Zardari did not talk of Washington’s pressures, sources in the party confirmed that the Americans had brought tremendous pressure on the PPP co-chairperson to make a coalition government with the likes of the PML-Q and MQM but not with the PML-N.
The N-League’s foremost priority for the reinstatement of the deposed judges is not getting approval from Washington despite the fact that within Pakistan this is the most popular demand of the masses. Not only the Americans are directly influencing the party to make what many see as an “artificial” coalition government in Islamabad, some pseudo intellectuals are also pursuing the same agenda. An influential PPP sympathiser on Thursday issued a timely warning to Asif Ali Zardari to beware of such unsought advices.
The Pakistan People’s party (PPP) and the Awami National Party (ANP) on Thursday reached on agreement in principle to move together for a coalition at the federal and provincial levels for the supremacy of parliament, war against terror, provincial autonomy and independence of the judiciary. “We met today and agreed in principal to move together for democracy and Pakistan,” said PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and ANP President Asfandyar Wali Khan while talking to newsmen after holding the meeting at the Parliament Lodges here.
Asif Ali Zardari was accompanied by opposition leader in the Senate Raza Rabbani, PPP Information Secretary Sherry Rehman and party spokesman Farhatullah Babar.
The meeting continued for more than an hour at the residence of Asfandyar Wali at the lodges in which both the leaders discussed all the issues pertaining to the formation of a coalition at the federal as well as provincial level.
According to the sources, there was consensus during the meeting that the party having majority at the provincial level would head the government.
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