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| August 29, 2005 | Monday | Rajab 23, 1426 |
Aziz, Shujaat act to end PML row over polls
LAHORE, Aug 28: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan Muslim League president Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi decided on Sunday to call a meeting of important party leaders from Rahim Yar Khan to settle their differences.
All federal ministers, MNAs and other party leaders from the district have been invited to the meeting to be held at the Muslim League House in Islamabad.
This will be the first meeting aimed at ending bitterness, arising out of the local government elections.
The three leaders also exchanged views on the overall situation in Punjab and other issues.
Chaudhry Shujaat told Dawn after the meeting that leaders of Attock, Chakwal, Rajanpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Mianwali would be called separately.
In Rahim Yar Khan, the ruling party faces a crisis-like situation as federal Minister Jehangir Tareen and ex-nazim Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmud are against accepting Rafiq Leghari as the party candidate for nazim.
Other leaders of the district have been issuing statements levelling serious allegations against Mr Mehmud.
In Dera Ghazi Khan, former president Farooq Leghari, who had merged his Millat Party with the PML, and his son Awais Leghari, a federal minister, allege that leaders of the ruling party were involved in rigging.
Chakwal’s Gen Majeed Malik has questioned the Punjab chief minister’s competence to nominate the nazim for his district. He argues that in a non-party election it was the voters’ prerogative, not the chief minister’s, to decide who should be their district nazim. His statements have not gone well with the party leadership.
Indicating that no disciplinary action was being contemplated against the leaders who had issued hostile statements, Chaudhry Shujaat said the party would try to settle all differences among various leaders.
He said those who could not win the elections would also be accommodated, an incentive to losers to bury the hatchet.
Chaudhry Shujaat rejected allegations of rigging in the elections and said that while some individuals might have done something wrong at some places, the government was not involved at any level. He said defeated candidates usually levelled such allegations, and it had been witnessed even in the United States.
He said some relatives of ministers had lost and this would not have happened if the government had rigged the polls.
The chief minister briefed the prime minister about the results of the local elections in the province. Mr Aziz expressed satisfaction over the results.
The prime minister and the PML president also decided to call a meeting of the ruling coalition’s parliamentary party in the National Assembly on Monday afternoon.
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