President Asif Ali Zardari has spoken by phone to Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain twice over the past to discuss alliance with other parties, a top PML-Q leader said yesterday. “Hussain informed us before Eidul Fitr that Zardari recently talked to him on phone twice,” said the PML-Q stalwart who did not want to be named. He could not recall the dates of these contacts. However, chief PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said he was not aware of any such conversation. He said he was expected know all important contacts that Zardari made with other political leaders. He made it clear that when his government talks of taking all political forces on board on major policies, it excludes the PML-Q, which has a long history of collaboration with former President Pervez Musharraf. Asked to comment on reports of parleys between his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and PML-Q to join hands at the federal and Punjab levels and oust the PML-Nawaz from the Punjab government, Hussain told this correspondent that no such decision has been taken yet. “However, talks have been held with every side including the PML-N,” he said. The PML-Q chief said he was contacting his younger brother Chaudhry Wajahat to know what exactly he had stated the other day. Wajahat was quoted to have said that most of PML-Q members are in favor of joining the PPP in the center, but the final decision rests with the party president. “I had originally opposed the idea, but most of my colleagues wanted to join the PPP-led coalition government in the center because PML-Q's old partners JUI-F and MQM are already part of it. The PPP wants to get Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif disqualified and install its own chief minister in Punjab for which it would require PML-Q's support,” he told Saudi Gazette. A senior PML-Q official believed that the PPP-PML-N coalition will not survive for another month because of the constant tussle going on in it. “The Punjab government is not sailing smoothly because the PPP ministers continue to complain that they don't have the free hand,” he said. “I think the only thing that is somewhat delaying the ouster of the Punjab chief minister is that the PPP doesn't want to give the impression that it has got rid of the PML-N shortly after Asif Zardari became the president of Pakistan,” one PML-Q leader said. Another stalwart said Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, Federal Advisors Rehman Malik and Manzoor Wattoo and Federal Minister Syed Khurshid Shah have mainly talked to the PML-Q for making an alliance with it and their efforts were meeting with success. He said there was no doubt that a predominant majority of the PML-Q lawmakers and other leaders is inclined towards the PML-N. He said it was mainly the top PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, who was responsible for pushing the PML-Q away to the extent that most of its legislators are willing to join hands with the PPP. The PML-Q leader said his party was even all set to withdraw Mushahid Hussain Sayed as the presidential candidate in favor of the PML-N nominee, had Nawaz Sharif personally approached Chaudhry Shujaat instead of talking to him through his nominees. “Our first priority has always been the PML-N.” He claimed that as Zardari has politically knocked out the PML-N chief because of his policies, the PML-Q was giving up the idea of any cooperation with the PML-N and has inched closer to the PPP. The PML-Q leader said Nawaz Sharif was not opposed to collaboration with his party on his own terms and conditions that were not acceptable to the PML-Q. He said the PML-Q has feared political loss and disadvantage if the Shahbaz Sharif government stays even after it joins the federal cabinet. That is why, he said, the PML-Q is working out a “package deal” with the PPP according to which its cooperation with the PPP would not remain confined to the center but would extend to Punjab. However, he said a number of PML-Q leaders did not want to take the blame for destabilizing or throwing out the Punjab government, and this was possible only if their party MPs join the federal cabinet after the provincial government falls because of the PPP-PML-N confrontation. Farhatullah Babar said that he was not convinced that the PPP would include the PML-Q in the ruling coalition at the federal or Punjab level. He said there has been great resentment in the PPP against the PML-Q because of its past. __
