ISLAMABAD: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari talked by telephone for a second time in a week on Wednesday and agreed to make every effort to keep the opposition’s alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) intact.

In a significant development hours after the telephonic talk between the two leaders, PPP gave a call to its workers to accompany Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) vice president Maryam Nawaz during her appearance before the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Lahore on Friday (tomorrow) in line with the PDM’s decision.

While directing party leaders and activists to join the rally with full preparations, President of the PPP’s Central Punjab chapter Qamar Zaman Kaira in a statement announced that he would himself lead the party’s convoy.

On Tuesday, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had barred the party leaders and members from issuing statements against any PDM component party, particularly the PML-N.

PPP asks its workers to accompany Maryam during her appearance before NAB

The decision that the leaders of the PDM component parties would accompany Ms Nawaz had been taken during a meeting between Maulana Fazlur Rehman and PML-N leaders at Jati Umra on March 21.

Sources in the JUI-F told Dawn that both Mr Zardari and Maulana Fazl were of the view that breaking up of the opposition’s alliance at this stage would benefit the rulers and strengthen the present set-up against which the opposition parties had been struggling for the past several months.

They said the Maulana also asked Mr Zardari to accept the PDM’s decision with respect to the nomination of the opposition leader in the Senate. The JUI-F chief said that while nominating Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani for the office of the Senate chairman, it had been decided by the PDM committee that the office of the opposition leader in the upper house of the parliament would go to the PML-N irrespective of the outcome of the election to the top Senate office.

Maulana Fazl had earlier separately talked to Mr Zardari and PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif by telephone on March 18, two days after announcing postponement of the anti-government long march due to PPP’s rejection of the proposal for submitting en masse resignations of lawmakers from assemblies.

The sources said that Mr Zardari, who had forcefully opposed the idea of quitting the assemblies during the meeting of the heads of the PDM parties in Islamabad on March 16, had told the Maulana that the PPP had decided to convene a meeting of its Central Executive Committee (CEC) after its public meeting in Rawalpindi on the occasion of the death anniversary of the party’s founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on April 4 in which they would again review the proposal for submitting resignations from the assemblies.

According to sources in the PPP, both Mr Zardari and Maulana Fazl had once again tried to convince each other on the issue of en masse resignations. Mr Zardari, they said, had expressed concern over the decision of other PDM parties to link the resignations to the long march.

The Maulana, however, had told Mr Zardari that the PDM component parties would wait for a final reply from the PPP after its CEC meeting before making any decision.

Cracks within the ranks of the 10-party opposition alliance appeared on March 16 when its leadership announced postponement of its March 26 anti-government long march due to differences over the issue of resignations.

After presiding over the PDM heads’ meeting, the Maulana had disclosed that nine parties were in favour of resigning from the assemblies during the long march, but only the PPP had some “reservations over this thinking”.

The sources said that in the PDM meeting, Mr Zardari had made submission of resignations conditional to the return of Mr Sharif to the country. The PPP leader in his speech launched political attacks on Mr Sharif and highlighted his own sacrifices, stating that he had spent 14 years in jail.

In the meeting, PML-N vice-president Maryam Nawaz had defended her father in a forceful manner and categorically declared that her father would not return to the country to put his life in danger.

The sources said that the JUI-F chief was unhappy over the proceedings of the PDM meeting in which the PPP and the PML-N, the two arch-rivals of the past, once again made some personal attacks against each other.

Speaking at a ceremony in Peshawar, the PDM president had expressed annoyance over the PPP’s attitude, saying it should have respected the opinion and viewpoint of the nine parties of the alliance.

Later, the differences within the PDM on the nomination of opposition leader in the Senate also came to the surface when both the PML-N and the PPP publicly claimed their right to the key office and also started lobbying for it.

Interestingly, the PPP admits that previously it had agreed to give the office of the opposition leader to the PML-N in return for nomination of Mr Gilani for the office of Senate chairman, but says that after his defeat, the situation has changed.

PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz on the other hand said the decision that the office of the leader of the upper house would go to the PML-N had already been taken and it would not be reversed and that it had nothing to do with the results of the Senate chairman’s election.

The PML-N has already nominated Azam Nazeer Tarar for the post, but the PPP has not only rejected his nomination but also lodged a protest with the PML-N leadership over the nomination of Mr Tarar as he is a lawyer for the accused police officials in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case.

Mr Tarar has been elected senator for the first time on a seat reserved for technocrats and he was among 11 senators who were elected unopposed from Punjab.

At present, the PPP has 21 senators on opposition benches whereas the PML-N with 17 members is the second largest party in the upper house. Previously, the PML-N’s Raja Zafarul Haq was the leader of the opposition, but this time he did not contest Senate elections.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2021