Muqam may give Nawaz a much-needed boost

PML-Q’s provincial president is close to an agreement to join PML-N, sources say.

ISLAMABAD:

The man who is credited for the revival of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), MNA Engineer Amir Muqam, is contemplating joining Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the PML.

The isolated group of the former prime minister now seems set to regain the political ground that it lost to rivals in the 2008 general polls in the North West Frontier Province, now renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

The PML-Q provincial president is close to an agreement for joining Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz ahead of the next polls, his associates said.

An official of the PML-N said Muqam held a couple of meetings with key leaders of the party in recent weeks.

One such meeting took place at the farm house of a PML-Q leader in Islamabad who is also willing to join Sharif. He said there was a possibility of a direct interaction between Muqam and Nawaz Sharif very soon. “Some behind the scene activities are focused on it,” the official added.

Along with Muqam, many other political workers and activists from across the province are gearing up to join Nawaz.

Experts said it would give Nawaz a relatively stronger position in the Pakhtun-dominated belt of the province, a traditional weak link of the PML-N.

The party already has an upper hand in the non-Pakhtun Hazara areas of the province, but its popularity was dented when it supported the renaming of the province as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa back in 2010.

“We have covered some grounds and are getting closer to each other…there is a strong possibility that we can join Mian Sahib before elections,” said a person close to Muqam.

Hailing from a remote Shangla district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Muqam is thought to be behind guiding the PML-Q out of the shadow of former military dictator Pervez Musharraf, a factor that arguably hurt the party in 2008 general polls.

Muqam himself told The Express Tribune that he was in contact with the party of the former premier but ruled out that he might join him anytime soon.

He, however, said the party leaders and workers were not happy with the way PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and his associates were handling the Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa chapter of the party.

“They have always been ignoring us and that was the reason I resigned from the ministry recently,” he added.

Muqam said his workers were not ready to accept the PML-Q’s electoral alliance with the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and if this happened he would quit.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2011.