The Hindu : Pro-Musharraf parties form alliance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 08, 2002

International

International

Pro-Musharraf parties form alliance

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD May 7. With the presidential referendum over and the promised general elections staring in their face, the pro-Musharraf parties have begun positioning themselves for a big role in the future political set-up though their track record so far remains poor. An alliance of six small parties was born here on Monday.

The Prof-Musharraf parties, mostly small and one-man groups, are banking on help from the Government to ensure their success in the promised general elections to the National and Provincial Assemblies in October.

Two factors have given hope for the pro-Government parties. The Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, has time and again asserted that the leaders of the two big political parties in the country— the Pakistan People's Party led by Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif— have no role in the politics of the country.There is a consensus among political observers that minus Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif the PPP and PML cannot survive in the present form. In the run-up to the presidential referendum campaign there had been innumerable appeals by Gen. Musharraf to what he had termed as `fence sitters' in the two big parties to choose between him and their leaders.

In his recent campaign Gen. Musharraf has also argued that if he were to emerge victorious in the referendum, it was only logical to expect the victory of the parties that backed the exercise. Since the mainstream political and religious parties had given a call for boycott of the election, the Government would like to encourage the emergence of pro-referendum parties in the new Assemblies. As a first step towards dominating the new Assemblies ,six pro-Government parties on Monday joined hands to form a new political alliance named the National Alliance. Their aim is to contest the October elections on a single platform. The National Alliance consists of the Millat Party led by the former president, Farooq Leghari, the Pakistan Awami Tehrik of the Maulana Tahir-ul-Qadri, the National Awami Party of Ajmal Khattak, the Sindh National Front of the former Chief Minister, Mumtaz Bhutto, the National People's Party of the former caretaker Prime Minister, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi ,and the Sindh Democratic Alliance headed by the former MNA Arbab Ghulam Rahim. The Tehrik-i-Insaaf led by Imran Khan, the party that supported the referendum, had also been asked to join the new alliance but he has refused. Mr. Khan o said the new alliance had no roots among the masses, rather it was being imposed on the people.The former Prime Minister, Malik Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, who arrived here from London on Sunday night, has been nominated as the chairman of the new alliance.

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