September 19, 2003	Friday	Rajab 21, 1424

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)

ISLAMABAD, Sept 18: The unification of Muslim League factions has triggered differences within the now defunct Q-League as its leaders and workers have rejected the dissolution of the party’s general council, central working committee and the central organization, terming it illegal and unconstitutional, insiders told Dawn.

“Serious resentment is prevailing in the party ranks against a decision that has been made without taking the majority of the party leadership into confidence,” party sources, who requested anonymity, claimed.

The critics of the unification said the party workers felt betrayed as they were not ready to accept people like Ijazul Haq who had only one seat in the NA, Manzoor Wattoo whom their majority viewed as politically unscrupulous and Pir Pagara who was considered to be a man of dubious integrity.

Sources said PML-Q vice-president Majeed Malik visited the residence of PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain on Thursday morning and informed him that the decision to dissolve the party organizations was not acceptable.

He asked the PML chief to convene the general council of the PML-Q to take the workers into confidence about the merger.

Sources said the process of getting signatures for requisitioning the general council had already been set in motion.

A party workers’ meeting convened by Chaudhry Shujaat later in the day turned into a rally opposed to the unification. During the meeting, participants kept raising slogans against the unification which, they believed, had been done on smaller factions’ terms.

The workers demanded immediate summoning of the general council which alone was empowered to take the decision on dissolution of the party organizations.

Talking to reporters later, Majeed Malik stressed that the party constitution did not allow any individual to dissolve the party organization. He said all the party organizations were intact and they would remain so unless the general council decided otherwise.

There was a consensus at the meeting, which was also attended by federal ministers and party MPs, that an intrigue had been hatched to break the PML-Q under the cover of unification.