With PPP aid, PML-Q hopes to salvage some Senate seats

Partner in ruling coalition will lose 20 seats in March; aims to win 7-8 in elections.

ISLAMABAD:

As a test run for seat adjustments in the next general elections, rival-turned-ally Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) will be cooperating with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in the March 2 Senate elections.

Although the former ruling party has suffered a number of splits, it still claims to be the second largest party in the Upper House. Come March 11, however, it will be left with only one member in Senate – party chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, as half of the house will retire after the expiry of their term.

As a result, the PML-Q has sought applications from hopeful candidates for the party ticket, and has set January 30 as the deadline for applications. The PPP has already received applications from interested candidates for this purpose. A total of 54 members will be elected from all the provinces for the Upper House, whose new strength will be 104 in accordance with the 18th Amendment, which incorporated four reserved seats for minorities.

PML-Q leaders claim that according to their agreement with the PPP when they joined the alliance last year, the ruling party promised to adjust the PML-Q in future polls on the basis of the number of members elected on its ticket in the 2008 general elections, in, both, the national and provincial assemblies.

“According to the agreement, our strength in all the assemblies should be considered on the basis of the original count (the number of members elected on the party ticket in 2008),” PML-Q Information Secretary Kamil Ali told The Express Tribune.

An ambitious PML-Q leadership is now negotiating with the PPP with this formula in mind, and is demanding 10 to 12 seats, according to sources. Even if things run smoothly, however, they are likely to end up with seven to eight seats in total.

PML-Q no longer united

Around 84 members were elected on PML-Q’s ticket in the Punjab Assembly, but several of them created a forward bloc, which was later further divided into sub-groups.

Similarly, 22 members were elected on PML-Q’s ticket in the 65-member Balochistan Assembly; around 10 were elected in the Sindh Assembly and seven in Khyber-Pakthunkhwa (K-P). Crafted by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf by bringing different groups under one umbrella, the PML-Q is now divided into different factions in these assemblies as well, with party leadership having little grip over its members.

“We will be vying for two to three seats in Punjab, a seat each from Sindh, the capital territory, K-P and four to five seats in Balochistan if our original count is considered,” a close associate of Chaudhry Shujaat said. However, keeping in view their weak position, the Chaudhry brothers are flexible in their demands, he added.

‘You owe us’

“We joined the government when everyone else was leaving them. We stood by them through testing times. At the time, the PPP leadership had said ‘everything under the sky would be ours’ when we were negotiating our terms of cooperation with them,” another PML-Q leader said.

PML-Q, which is registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan as PML, has 21 senators now, though this figure only exists on paper as a result of the splinter groups. With this strength, it claims to be the second largest party after the PPP in Senate, the latter having a total of 27 senators. After the next Senate elections, PPP will be the single largest party in the Upper House.

In a recent meeting of coalition leaders in the Presidency, it was agreed that consensus candidates would be chosen for Senate elections and seats would be distributed ‘amicably’, in accordance with their respective numerical strength. Two other allies of the PPP – the MQM and ANP – have their members intact in all the assemblies.

The PPP will have no difficulty in negotiating seat adjustments with these two allies for Senate – but it’s a tricky case with the PML-Q, whose de facto strength varies widely from what it claims.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2012.