Re: Forward bloc on the cards in PPP/ War within PPP (merged)
Will Khwaja Muhammad Asif retract his lies?
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008/03/13/story_13-3-2008_pg3_1
Unfortunate politics of premiership
The senior vice-chairman of the PPP, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, has sent a legal notice to the PMLN leader Khwaja Muhammad Asif demanding a “complete retraction and withdrawal” of a “defamatory statement” about his alleged contacts with President Pervez Musharraf. Khwaja Asif, who was a part of the PMLN team that negotiated the bipartisan accord on forming coalition governments in Islamabad and Lahore, had made it public that his party didn’t want him as prime minister because of his “backdoor contacts” with President Pervez Musharraf.
Th legal notice has been triggered by the verbal formulations that Khwaja Asif used to describe the alleged secret contacts of Mr Fahim. He could have restrained himself because his party was under no pressure to disclose why the PPP was showing indecision over the nomination of their prime minister. In fact one sentence in the signed accord about coalition-forming was sufficient in itself as explanation of why Mr Fahim was not invited to the bipartisan summit in Bhurban. His act of accusing Mr Fahim in public was ill-advised, even though it has served to effectively shunt attention from the internal differences within the PPP over who should be prime minister to the agreement between the two coalition partners of what is in their mutual best interests.
**Mr Fahim is obviously offended with Mr Zardari for denying him the prime ministership. But he has muddied the waters by going public with his disgruntlement and eventhreatening to call a meeting of the ARD and nudging rumours to the effect that he has at least 25 MNAs on his side and can form a forward block if he is not suitably accommodated. **
Meanwhile, Mr Zardari has now come out into the open and said that his prty wants him to be prime minister when the time is right. It is unfortunate that this matter has developed to such antagonistic proportions in such a manner. The best thing would have been for Mr Zardari to say at the outset that the CEC of the PPP would take this decision in the ripeness of time instead of first saying that Mr Fahim would be their nominee and then trying to backslide from this position.
With hind-sight, we can also say that complications began when Mr Zardari began talking to Mr Nawaz Sharif about forming a coalition. The PMLN complained about Mr Fahim and his contacts with the president and, for reasons best known to him, Mr Zardari let his partymen talk about “a PPP prime minister from Punjab”. **One can say that it was the inability to decide on a name that triggered what many see as the surfacing of “four blocks” in Punjab PPP. **After the vice-president of the party Mr Aitzaz Ahsan proposed that the next prime minister should be from Sindh, the race for the hot seat began in earnest and became so unsavoury that new rumours about the candidacy of Mr Khursheed Shah and even Mr Zardari’s sister Dr Azra, an MNA-elect, from Sindh began to circulate too.
The National Assembly is going to convene on March 17 but an unofficial understanding about the next prime minister is not in place. It is being said that Mr Zardari will in fact be the next prime minister after a by-election, and that the party will now decide on an interim prime minister who will step down on the date Mr Zardari is ready to take over. Any talk of bifurcating the party and political offices in the PPP in power is neither here nor there. It has never worked in Pakistan and the last time it didn’t work was during the PMLQ government. The “Sonia Gandhi example” once mentioned by Mr Zardari is not apt at all.
The legal notice is not a good development and it should not go on from this stage to actual litigation. It must be withdrawn, but this can only be done after the PPP has sorted out its misunderstanding with Mr Fahim. He is still cautiously poised and will surely listen to good advice given in good faith.