ISLAMABAD: Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has finally ended his 18 years’ association with the Pakistan People’s Party, citing the leadership’s decision to ally the party with the Pakistan Muslim League-Q as the main reason for his expected and long-awaited decision.
Talking to reporters outside the Parliament House here on Monday, Mr Qureshi announced that he had also decided to resign from his National Assembly seat and joined his voice with some other opposition parties by calling for mid-term elections. “I wanted to make this announcement on the floor of the National Assembly, but I was intentionally denied this opportunity,” Mr Qureshi complained.
The NA session was adjourned to Tuesday after tributes to PPP leader Begun Nusrat Bhutto, who died last month.
Mr Qureshi, 55, who quit the cabinet in February, criticised the policies being pursued by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Soon after his press conference, a number of PPP leaders, including ministers, started lambasting their former colleague mainly for his outburst against President Zardari. The Presidency said Mr Qureshi’s decision was not a surprise.
Mr Qureshi, who took nine months to make up his mind to quit the party after his relationship with the leadership became strained when he declined to accept the water and power portfolio in a cabinet reshuffle in February, now wants to take another two weeks to decide about his future plan, saying that he will disclose it during a visit to Ghotki, Sindh, on Nov 27.
According to sources, Mr Qureshi has been negotiating terms with both the Pakistan Muslim League-N and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf, led by Imran Khan.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who had once served as provincial finance minister under Nawaz Sharif in Punjab, had already held several meetings with Mr Sharif and Mr Khan.
Sources in the PML-N told Dawn that Mr Qureshi had sought tickets for the next elections not only for himself but also for a number of his associates, including some of his family members.
The former foreign minister’s call for mid-term elections, according to analysts, is an indication that he may join either the PML-N or the PTI. They see very little chances of the former PPP stalwart forming a new party.
“There is no PPP. It has become a Zardari league. I announce that I will not remain associated with the Zardari league,” Mr Qureshi said, adding that the PPP co-chairman had lost the vision of the late party chairperson and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto by joining hands with her foes.
After announcing his decision he recited an Urdu couplet of the late Ibne Insha with a slight change: “Shah ji (instead of Insha ji) utho ab kooch karo, iss shehr main jee ka lagana kya.”
He claimed that genuine PPP workers were not ready to accept the PPP-PML-Q alliance. “How can we make an alliance with Qatil (murderer) league? A PPP worker will never accept this,” he said, adding: “Today, those people are sitting in the Gilani cabinet who had abandoned Benazir (in her lifetime).”
Mr Qureshi termed the alliance made on the grounds of national reconciliation a negation of the Charter of Democracy and said the “CoD was reached with Mian Sahib (Nawaz Sharif) and not with Chaudhrys”.
“President Zardari is seeking solace with those who had caused pain to BB (Benazir).” Mr Zardari loved power to the extent that he could sacrifice everything for it, Mr Qureshi added.
He urged the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice of the much-talked about letter allegedly written by President Zardari to US general Mike Mullen asking the Americans to support him and avert a possible military coup. He said if the report was true it was a serious issue because a supreme commander of the armed forces was seeking US action against his own army.
The former minister regretted that on the one hand President Zardari was sitting with BB’s rivals and, on the other, he was barred from entering her tomb in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. He was also critical of the leadership for stopping him from attending meetings of the party’s Central Executive Committee while his membership was intact.
Mr Qureshi questioned the inability of the rulers to expose Benazir’s killers, although police and law-enforcement agencies were under their control.
He recalled that he was the first district nazim to resign during the military regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf whereas Faryal Talpur, a sister of President Zardari, was also a district Nazim but did not resign.
Mr Qureshi, who was foreign minister for three years, accused the government of failing on all fronts, including economy.
Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said Mr Qureshi’s decision had not come as a surprise. It was surprising that the alleged shortcomings and weaknesses of the party leadership dawned upon Mr Qureshi only after resigning his cabinet position, he added.
Mr Babar denied all allegations levelled by Mr Qureshi and said the party’s decision to join hands with the PML-Q was in line with the reconciliation policy as envisioned by Benazir Bhutto.
Former minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said the people who kept shifting from one party to another were never considered a true part of the party.
Talking to reporters, he recalled that Mr Qureshi was once with Nawaz Sharif, then joined the PPP, and now he was leaving it too. Mr Ashraf said resignations of a few people would not harm the party.
Information Minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, who had joined the PPP just before the 2008 elections, told a private TV channel that by resigning as the MNA and quitting the PPP, Mr Qureshi had written his “political obituary” and political wilderness was his destiny.
She alleged that Mr Qureshi had been targeting the president and the government only to get political mileage. She said Mr Qureshi had been physically associated with the PPP but mentally following his mentor, Gen Ziaul Haq, who had brought him into politics.
Differences of Mr Qureshi with the party leadership came to the surface after his last-minute refusal to take oath as minister for water and power in February. Mr Qureshi, according to PPP sources, was angry over President Zardari’s move to stop him from issuing any statement as foreign minister on the issue of the shooting to death by US citizen Raymond Davis of two Pakistanis and assigning this task to Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
Later Mr Qureshi created a difficult position for the government when, as former foreign minister, he said the kind of blanket immunity Washington was pressing for Davis was not endorsed in the official record of the foreign ministry.
Mr Zardari, the sources said, was also unhappy with Mr Qureshi for “intentionally skipping” a meeting between him and the US Congress delegation on the Davis issue.
The former foreign minister, in a meet-the-press programme at National Press Club in Islamabad in March, came out with a virtual charge-sheet against the government of his own party when he presented a very dismal picture of the economic and law and order situation in the country. However, at that time, he had refrained from making any personal attack on the president or the prime minister.
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