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| 08 November 2004 | Monday | 24 Ramazan 1425 |
Ruling party 'clinging' to uniform
LAHORE, Nov 7: The government fears that the ruling PML will not remain intact if Gen Pervez Musharraf puts off his military uniform, claims MMA central leader Liaquat Baloch.
"Government officials admit in their private talks with MMA leaders that Gen Musharraf does not trust loyalties of the ruling MPs who can change their allegiance for a slightest benefit," he told Dawn here on Sunday.
Sans military uniform it would be difficult for Gen Musharraf to keep them (ruling MPs) under one umbrella, he added.
To look up the situation a little bit, efforts were being made to replace PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Husain with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Baloch claimed.
He said contacts among various democratic forces were on for devising a national charter for launching a joint anti-Musharraf movement. The charter included features of interim set-up, procedure of new elections and taking the movement to its logical end.
The MMA leader said the army might take over after the successful movement but the signatories to the charter would be required not to establish any contact with "the new martial law administrator" unless he restored democracy in toto.
"Experience of the past movements has revealed that for achieving goals of any movement, post-movement scenario must be decided before hand," he responded to a question.
Asked if the religious alliance had reservations about direct masses-army clash, he said all such reservations would go when the movement would be launched.
Moreover, he said, such reservations could be had only when the army was not directly ruling the country.
Mr Baloch held a secular lobby in the PPP responsible for delay in coming closer to the MMA and the ARD for launching the joint movement. Otherwise, he said, the people like Shah Mahmood Qureshi had even offered to join MMA's Dec 5 public meeting at Multan.He described it as disinformation by the government that there were any differences among MMA constituents, especially the JUI-F, over the launch of the anti-Musharraf drive.
He said it were JUI-F president Maulana Fazlur Rahman who had rang from Germany to MMA elders here for holding a supreme council meeting to decide that NWFP chief minister Akram Durrani would not attend the National Security Council (NSC) meeting.
He ruled out dissolution of assemblies by Gen Musharraf for holding elections afresh to get a two-third majority for the PML.
With the two-third majority what he could do was to make the NSC a constitutional body and keep his uniform for another term. For the two benefits he could not afford such a big exercise whose results might be against his calculations, the MMA leader added.
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