LAHORE: The Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) on Thursday tried to woo the PML-N’s disgruntled legislators representing the South Punjab Province Front.

The front led by former caretaker prime minister Balakh Sher Mazari, however, preferred to buy time to decide which party it should go along ahead of the upcoming election.

The PML-N, on the other hand, has decided not to reach out to any of the disgruntled members, saying it was expecting that all those who had not voted for its Quaid (supreme leader) Nawaz Sharif in the National Assembly would quit the party in coming days.

A day after taking the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) onboard and announcing contesting 2018 election on one symbol across the country, the GDA and the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional chief Pir Pagara (Sibghatullah Rashdi) called on the front members here and asked them to contest election jointly.

“We fully support the front’s struggle to create a south Punjab province and hope it will succeed. We want that the like-minded parties and persons should contest the coming election together without losing the identity of their party,” Mr Rashdi told reporters.

MNA from Rahim Yar Khan, Mr Khusro Bakhtiar, who is president of the front, said the group had yet to decide with whom to forge an election alliance. “Pagara sahib has visited us to support our cause,” he said, adding the front had been in contact with a good number of lawmakers, mostly of PML-N in the south and hopefully they would join it (front) soon. “We have firm believe that it will be very difficult for the PML-N or other parties to have their share in 46 MNA seats from the south without supporting the creation of a separate province for its (south) people,” he said.

Avoiding to answer the question that why did the front members feel the need for parting ways with the PML-N at this stage when they themselves practically did nothing for the cause they were advocating now, Mr Khusro took on the PML-N, saying only a resolution was tabled in this regard in the Punjab Assembly and both the PML-N and the PPP had done nothing to create the south Punjab province. “You will see these both parties will be forced to take up this issue. The PTI also has supported this issue in principle,” he said.

To another question Khusro said: “We are in contact with both the PTI and the PPP, but we will take a decision to join hands with any party or alliance at an appropriate time.”

Punjab Chief Minister and PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif earlier had barred his party leaders from commenting about the rebel lawmakers with a hope to woo some of them back. However, after Nawaz Sharif’s stance that these members had never been ‘part’ of the PML-N and the party won’t care about those ditching it during the testing time, Shahbaz Sharif seems to have dropped the idea of reaching out to any of them.

“The PML-N has decided in principle not to establish any contact with these law makers. We have good candidates in these constituencies and the voters will teach them (rebels) a lesson in the coming election,” Shahbaz Sharif’s spokesman Malik Muhammad Ahmad told Dawn.

He said the party was anticipating that a few more MNAs who had not voted for the bill aimed at amendment to make Nawaz Sharif president of the PML-N after his disqualification (in Panama Papers case), will quit. “There were some 15 or so PML-N MNAs who had deviated from the party line then,” he said.

Mr Ahmad claimed that except this group the rest of the party was united.

When asked did the PML-N see any “force” behind the front, he said it was usual for such groups to emerge during the election year. “So, the PML-N is not worried as it is part of politics,” Mr Ahmad added.

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2018