PML-N may split ways with PPP in Punjab: Sources

Media will be officially informed about the decision of the PML-N After 48 hours.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) held a meeting of its members in Raiwind to discuss the course of action to be taken with respect to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

While there are some reports that the PML-N has decided to split ways with the PPP in Punjab, a formal announcement of what went on in the meeting, will be made in 48 hours. No PML-N leader was willing to comment on the details either.

Meanwhile, the Unification Bloc in the Punjab Assembly announced the names of Atta Maneka and Dr Tahir Ali Javed for minister slots, during a meeting between the bloc members.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) in response issued show cause notices to 15 Unification Bloc members.

The party will refer to the Election Commission if the Unification Bloc does not respond to its show cause notices within three days.

Updated from print edition (below)

PML-N’s 10-point agenda: As deadline looms, final meeting ends inconclusively

As the final meeting between negotiators of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on the latter’s 10-point agenda ended inconclusively on Tuesday, both parties returned to their respective corners to draw out a future line of action.

Though negotiators from the PML-N have not commented openly on the failure of the talks, or otherwise, the positioning of the PPP-led government’s principal opposition has been telling.

Already having adopted a noticeably harsher tone against the federal government as of late, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif’s latest broadside against the ruling PPP came in an address in Kot Mithan on Tuesday, where he said that no progress had been made in the implementation of the 10-point agenda handed to them by his party.

Castigating its inability to implement the agenda, he said the government had “cheated” his party and given nothing to the people except disappointment. Recently, Sharif also gave his party’s  leadership the green light to launch a campaign against the government.

The PML-N has threatened that it will kick out the PPP from the Punjab cabinet if the government fails to deliver on all the points. This decision is likely to be made in the Central Organising Committee (COC) of the PML-N slated to be held on February 25 – right after the 45-day deadline given to the government to implement the 10-point agenda expires.

For its part, the government looks like it, too, is preparing itself for the worst. An extra-ordinary meeting of coalition partners has been called today (Wednesday) at the Prime Minister House, which is to be attended by leaders of the Awami National Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement as well as MNAs from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The last meeting

“All ten glasses of water are not filled; some are full, some are half-full, some one-third full,” PML-N’s chief negotiator Senator Ishaq Dar said after the final PML-N-PPP meeting, referring to progress on the 10-point agenda that his party had presented on January 6.

However, Dar stopped short of divulging the meeting’s details. “The negotiating teams will take their respective leaderships into confidence and it will be their prerogative to share the actual details with the public,” Dar said. The PML-N team, he said, will present a final report in the February 25 meeting of the party’s COC.

“The government still has 48 hours before the 45-day deadline expires and if there is progress on any point, the government can inform the PML-N,” he said.

In order to maintain its majority in the Punjab Assembly, the PML-N has decided to induct the Unification Bloc members – who broke away from the PML-Quaid, into the provincial cabinet.

With the PML-N’s ten-point agenda the PPP government had clubbed its single point – the PML-N’s support for mobilisation of domestic resources through levying new taxes from March 1, as the fiscal deficit is forecast to touch eight per cent of the total size of the economy. Senator Dar has already stated that his party will extend its support for revenue measures only if the government fully implements the ten points.

Ten points’ implementation status

The federal government has notified a 12-member parliamentary committee to carry forward election commission reforms, which was one of the ten conditions, Express News reported on Tuesday.

The notification was issued after the government and the PML-N meeting. Members of the parliamentary committee include Senator Haroon Akhtar of PML-Q, Haji Adeel of the Awami National Party, Farooq Sattar of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haidri of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam and Munir Orakzai from Fata. PPP members in the committee are Khursheed Shah and Islamuddin Shaikh while Khawaja Muhammad Asif and Tehmina Daultana will represent the PML-N.

The government has already cut the size of the federal cabinet but the PML-N says even the new cabinet has some faces with a tainted past.

The remaining eight points are not fully implemented.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 23^rd, 2011.