It would be battle royal if its Sheikh Rashid vs NS for NA-55. I think NS will win, but it would be fun to see these 2 going against each other.
Sheikh Rashid to try again from Pindi on PML-N NA seat
Sheikh Rashid to try again from Pindi on PML-N NA seat
Friday, May 08, 2009
By Tariq Butt
ISLAMABAD: Sheikh Rashid Ahmad plans to jump in the by-election for NA-55 Rawalpindi seat, which fell vacant after the resignation of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)’s Haji Pervez Khan, but only after evaluating the worth and weight of his competitor.
“I will decide about contesting for this seat only after seeing the PML-N candidate,” Sheikh Rashid, who is the chief of his own Awami Muslim League (AML), told The News. He said even if he did not vie for it, he would put up a candidate of his party. “We are always ready for elections and have been in touch with our voters all the time,” he said.
Sheikh Rashid added that he was amongst a few politicians, who have always been amongst the constituents. He said this was the reason that they loved him much. He was not in a position to hazard a guess about the next PML-N nominee and said the PML-N was keeping the name of its nominee close to its chest. However, he pointed out that those PML-N leaders, who were sentenced in the famous Supreme Court storming case, were not qualified to be candidates in any elections. Some of them, he said, had not even appealed against this decision.
The AML chief has the distinction of winning this National Assembly seat for six times — in 1985, 1988, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 2002. He was defeated for the first time in the 2008 general elections by the towering Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, when the PML-N’s popularity wave swept the Punjab. He faced the same fate in the neighbouring Rawalpindi city constituency of NA-56 where Hanif Abbasi routed him.
Pervez Khan clinched this seat on the PML-Nís ticket after Javed Hashmi vacated it but had to step down after he was found involved in the offence of cheating in the intermediate examination.
Sheikh Rashid’s dilemma is that both the major political parties, the PML-N and PPP, which have the dominant say in this constituency, have strong antipathy against him. Rather each one of them wants to teach him a lesson for constantly putting them on the mat during the nine-year rule of Pervez Musharraf.
He was not optimistic about any long survival of the present democratic set-up and thought that it would not go beyond a few months. Sheikh Rashid said the kind of political support, which the military operation in Swat and Buner was required to be accorded, was missing. This, he said, was sending a wrong message to the powers that matter.
The AML chief said Pakistan, confronted with a host of alarming internal and external pressures, needed absolute political cohesion and harmony to face the dangerous situation.