07 January 2005	Friday	25 Ziqa'ad 1425

ISLAMABAD, Jan 6: The Pakistan Muslim League-N and People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP), have so far not agreed on a joint candidate and decided to field their men separately for the February 27 by-election on a National Assembly seat from Lahore, leaders of both the parties told Dawn here on Thursday.

Though leaders of the PPP and the PML-N claimed there would be a joint ARD candidate on NA-127 seat that fell vacant after the resignation of Dr Tahirul Qadri, the two major component parties of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) were claiming their right on the seat.

Talking to Dawn, Khwaja Saad Rafiq of PML-N claimed that it was the right of his party to field the candidate in the by-election on NA-127 seat because its candidate had obtained more votes than the PPP's in the October 2002 elections.

MNA Saad Rafiq disclosed that the party had already finalized the name of Naseer Ahmed Bhutta as its candidate and final announcement in this regard would be made after getting approval of the PML-N chief, Nawaz Sharif.

"The PPP candidate was at number four in the run in the last elections so how can they lay their claim on the seat", the PML-N leader maintained. He said the PML-N would also likely to get support of the MMA in this constituency and he had already talked to MMA's Liaquat Baloch about it.

In the last elections, he said, due to the support of the PML-N, an MMA candidate Ehsanul Haq Waqas was elected from one of the two Punjab Assembly seats from this National Assembly constituency.

He expressed the hope that the PPP would support the PML-N candidate in the by-election in the larger interest of the opposition's unity and the ARD. On the other hand, PPP secretary-general Raja Pervez Ashraf said the party would soon nominate its own candidate for the forthcoming by-election after getting approval of party chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

Responding to the assertions made by Khwaja Saad Rafiq, he said the PPP was not short of candidates and could contest election from any constituency in the country. However, Mr Ashraf said final decision regarding the ARD candidate would be made in the meeting of the Alliance very soon.

A source told Dawn that the issue would be discussed at a meeting of the ARD in Lahore on January 12. If the issue could not be resolved then it would again be discussed in another meeting of the Alliance scheduled for January 14 in Sargodha.

It may be recalled that both the PPP and the PML-N had earlier faced similar situations in the by-elections held on various National Assembly and provincial assembly seats.

At the time of the by-election in Attock and Tharparkar, both the parties failed to resolve the issue amicably putting the existence of the alliance in danger and the matter was resolved only by the direct intervention of both Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.

Similarly, at the time of the election of the prime minister, both the parties fielded their candidates against Gen Musharraf's nominee Shaukat Aziz. However, after a lengthy consultation and several meetings, the PPP withdrew its candidate Makhdoom Amin Fahim in support of PML-N's Makhdoom Javed Hashmi.