November 15, 2002	Friday	Ramazan 9, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 14: Barring any last minute breakthrough the first session of the National Assembly elect will meet here on Saturday under a thick cloud of uncertainty as no political group has so far succeeded in mobilizing the required numbers to form a government on its own or in coalition with other groups in a House of 342.

The issue of government formation has remained unresolved despite more than a month long negotiations among the three major political groups — the government sponsored PML-Q, the opposition PPP and the alliance of religious groups, the MMA.

The existing strength of the House in which you have to show the majority to form a government is 335 since the result of one election is still pending and six MNAs (Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Khurshid Kasuri, Shaikh Rashid, Aftab Sherpao, Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rahman) will have to give up one of the two NA seats each has won. This would mean that any group which can show 168 votes can make the government albeit only a precarious one.

The PML-Q which has the largest number of seats (118) in the House has so far been able to muster a total of 144 votes including 16 of the National Alliance, 5 of PML-F, 3 of PML-J and 2 of PPP(Sherpao).

Since the PML-Q will have to vacate three double seats and the PPP-S one the total strength of the alliance in the National Assembly would then get reduced to 140.

Also, there are eight Sindh MNAs, all from the King’s party alliance who have also won their provincial seats. If they choose to stay back in the province in order to make it impossible for PPP to form a government there, then, the strength of this alliance at the centre goes down further to 132.

The King’s party also claims to have won the support of the 17 MQM members. But so far there has been no confirmation about this from the MQM side. The PML-Q also counts the one seat parties like the PML-Z, the PAT and the MQM on its side but again, the leaders of these parties seem to be still playing the game of wait-and-see, keeping their options open.

The PPP has 81 seats. With no other groups to support it, it has no place to go but sit in the opposition.

However, if it decides to go with the MMA which has 68 of its own, then perhaps both PML-N with its 19 and JWP, BNP and PTI with one each will go with it making a grand total of 170. This total will come down to 168 because both Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rahman would be vacating one of the two seats each had won.

But after Nov 6 when it had appeared that Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, the chief of ARD had almost managed to get his Alliance to join hands with the MMA, things went sour on this front as the PPP appeared to dragging its feet in finalizing the agreement.

There are clear indications that at the eleventh hour when the PPP was about to sign on the dotted line, Washington prevailed upon Benazir Bhutto to back off while in Pakistan a group of PPP MNAs from Punjab took the position that they would find it difficult to justify to their voters the Party’s decision to join hands with those very elements against whom they had been struggling all along.

Informed sources also maintain that the military regime itself made a desperate attempt to entice the PPP away from the MMA by offering it everything it wanted including the release of Asif Ali Zardari and permission to Benazir Bhutto to return.

The sources said that when the PPP wanted the government to turn the deal into concrete action before the NA session which at that time had been called on Nov 8, the government tried to buy time by offering to make good its pledge after the first session which was just 48 hours away.

It was, according to these sources, to allow the government enough time to do the needful that Amin Fahim had asked in what he terms ‘passing’ to postpone the session by a few days.

Shujaat on the other hand was reportedly asked to request for the postponement by a week so that he could make another bid to bring MMA on board and also in the meanwhile allow various agency personnel to try to create forward blocks within the PPP and MMA.

However, again on the face of it, efforts by the PML-Q in the intervening week to win over the support of the MMA seem to have struck the rock of LFO, NSC and the COAS cap.

What had appeared to have been accomplished on Wednesday when Qazi Hussain of MMA and Chaudhry Shujaat of PML-Q addressed a joint press conference turned out to be only an illusion on Thursday morning when Qazi sb. told the media in Karachi after the MMA’s marathon Iftar to Sehri discussion that no agreement has been reached between the two parties on the three main contentious issues.

Informed circles here believe that MMA by making it appear as if it was ready to concede on major demands on Wednesday had primed the government into summoning the first session of the NA on Nov 16.