Re: Has PML[Q] begun to fall apart?
Every day I wake up to the same person with two nicks to flood the hell out of PA to sink all these threads so that his pro-mush threads are always on top… Pathetic:
PML-Q has second thoughts about gains
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) realists have revised downward the estimated number of seats at national and provincial levels that their party has earlier projected to secure in Jan 8 elections, as the poll fever heats up.
“Notwithstanding our internal assessment regarding our victory projections, my informed objective guess is that we will be bagging around 70 seats in Punjab,” a senior PML-Q leader said, giving his dispassionate appraisal.
Before former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s return to Pakistan from exile, the PML-Q, flying very high, had envisaged during private discussions to easily get around 130 of 272 seats of Punjab. Later, the approximation was brought down to 110. Again it was downgraded to 90. The pragmatic lot has now put it at nearly 70.
The realists believe that the remaining seventy-eight seats in the province, including two of the federal capital, will be shared by the PML-N and PPP with Nawaz taking a significant lead over Benazir. But they have no doubt in their mind that the PML-Q and its ally, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), would emerge as the single largest bloc in the National Assembly.
“The support of 12 directly elected Federally Administered Tribal Areas MNAs that we will get should not be discounted,” one of them remarked. “In the cut-throat electoral fight, I think it would be fair not to expect a simple majority in the National Assembly and backing of tribal MNAs will be crucial in the formation of government.”
A set of PML-Q pragmatists feels that regardless of their party performance in the elections to the National Assembly, it is poised to clinch a two-thirds majority in the Punjab Assembly. “Even if we fail to form the government at the centre, we will certainly have Punjab, the Senate and the most important, the presidency, with us. We will then see how any non-PML-Q prime minister will rule in peace, as he or she will be confined to Islamabad alone,” one of them said in an ominous tone.
The PML-Q is confident that the good job done by Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi in Punjab during the last five years will pay massive electoral dividends to its candidates. When Benazir Bhutto became prime minister for the first time in 1988, she had an extremely hostile PML-packed Senate, a conspiring president, an aggressive chief minister in Punjab (Nawaz Sharif), and a suspecting establishment. All this made her a helpless and incapacitated ruler.
In the last days of her 20-month rule, she had visited the Senate just once and totally failed to do any worthwhile legislation in the presence of non-cooperative Upper House. The then presidency and the Punjab strongman remained engaged in hatching plots to get rid of her.
Chaudhrys of Gujrat predict a repeat of that scenario if they fail to form a government at the centre. The PML-Q realists think that the MQM will bag around 20 National Assembly seats, the PML-F around half a dozen seats, including two from Punjab of former federal minister Jahangir Tareen and Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmud and former Sindh chief minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim and his group are likely to obtain a similar number of seats in Sindh.
They feel that additional seats that the PML-Q and its allies will gain in Balochistan and NWFP would land it in a comfortable position to emerge as the single largest group in the Lower House.
These pragmatists realise that the independent election campaigns launched by Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto are making a difference for their respective candidates and impinging hard on their party.
They point out that the PML-Q is not conducting the physical campaign at the national level like its two main rivals. They concede that the drive being vigorously carried out by their prime ministerial candidate Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi is so far limited to Punjab.
“In Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP, our campaign is more focused on the constituencies by our candidates rather than holding big rallies addressed by the party’s central leaders,” a prominent PML-Q leader told this correspondent.
Pervaiz Elahi is yet to spare time to pay even his maiden visits to other three provinces during the election campaign. Its prospects at the ballot apart, the PML-Q as a whole is content and satisfied by seeing Musharraf in the presidency as, in its view, he will be guarding party’s interests under all circumstances. Added to this is the favourable state machinery and a huge battalion of local councillors all over Pakistan, who will make the difference. Publicly, the top PML-Q leadership makes no bones about the weight and power of Nazims, who will help its candidates.