Merged politics

Without the two largest PML groups, it is hard to say if the new, united force will have any significant impact.

The Pir of Pagara has announced the launching of the Muttahida Muslim League, a party that draws together a number of the smaller Muslim League factions. There are a quite bewildering number of these — distinguished only by the initial attached to their names. The merger, which brings together the Pir’s own PML-Functional with factions led by Hamid Nasir Chattha, Ejazul Haq, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and disgruntled members of the PML-Q who had formed a ‘like-minded’ group in 2009 after falling out with the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, comes as a relief in the sense that it reduces the number of separate PML groups. But the fact is that without the two largest PML groups, the PML-N of Mian Nawaz Sharif and the PML-Q led by Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, it is hard to say if the new, united force will have any significant impact. Talks with these two major factions are said to be on.

The politics of the PML, notably since the 1980s, has become more and more complex. Just weeks ago, the PML-Q and the PML-F had announced they were coming together — though, as the Pir of Pagara hinted, the Chaudhrys, recently engaged in talks with the PPP, appear to have banished this to the very back of their minds. Their objection to the presence of ‘like-minded’ leaders at the Karachi gathering and also that of Mian Azhar, the man who first founded the PML-Q but then fell out with the Chaudhrys, may have been a further factor in this. We should also not forget that in 2004, all the PML factions, with the obvious exception of the PML-N whose leaders at the time were in exile, came together to form a united Pakistan Muslim League, under the patronage of General Musharraf. The PML-F later announced its exit from the group — but in theory, at least all the other factions as well as a few other small parties should have remained together.

This of course did not happen, the parties dissipated and for now it is hard to predict if the fate of the Mutthida Muslim League will be any different.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2010.