Days of alliance

The PPP’s two allies in government, the MQM and the ANP, have both stated they will contest the election...

As elections draw nearer, we will no doubt hear about various electoral alliances or looser  ‘understandings’. The agreement reportedly reached between the PPP and the PML-Q is important in the overall election picture. While the two parties — despite their considerable ideological differences — are, of course, partners in government, there had been some doubts over the formation of a new election-time alliance, mainly due to recent tensions. These essentially stemmed from the PML-Q’s concerns that Manzoor Wattoo, heading the PPP in Punjab, was trying to break away their members and draw them into the PPP. However, the matter seems to have been resolved.

The PML-Q, after a meeting between its leaders and the prime minister, has stated it has now reached an agreement with the PPP on an alliance and how to adjust seat allocations for this. The matter is to be finalised in a meeting between the PML-Q and the president of the country, though information secretary for the PML-Q seems confident this will go through. The deal involves giving seats on which candidates from one party had won before to that party again and deciding on the stronger candidate for other seats. The deal that has been reached will boost the PPP in Punjab, the province where the PML-Q holds strength and sees itself as a key challenger to the PML-N. This is particularly significant as recent polls have shown a rise in the PML-N’s popularity on a countrywide basis. This would suggest a PPP-PML-Q alliance could come in very handy indeed.



The PPP’s other two allies in government, the MQM and the ANP, have both stated they will contest the election independently. This makes the agreement reached between the two major parties all the more important with a major impact likely on the polls when the process begins and in the days after it, as the time to form a new government approaches. The contours of the coming electoral contest are then becoming clearer. We can now only hope it will be held as planned.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2013.