ISLAMABAD, Aug 29: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal on Monday played down its internal differences on what it termed local adjustments in the local government elections and said there was no dispute among the component parties on this account.

A meeting of the MMA’s supreme council dismissed the local body elections as massively rigged and manipulated.

Emerging from a five-hour meeting, the MMA leaders declared that they had held discussion on ‘everything’ in an atmosphere of congeniality and claimed to have foiled designs aimed at creating rifts in their ranks.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed presided over the meeting which was attended by heads of the component parties of the alliance, except Maulana Samiul Haq of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (Sami) who was represented by one of his deputies.

Prominent among those who attended the meeting were Allama Sajid Naqvi, Prof Sajid Mir, Syed Munawar Hassan, Liaquat Baloch, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, Sahibzada Abul Khair Muhammad Zubair, Gen K.M. Azhar and Pir Ijaz Hashmi.

Talking to newsmen, Qazi Hussain Ahmed said he personally agreed with the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy parties that they should not participate in any future elections under the Musharraf government. He said the supreme council was competent to take a unified stand on this question.

Leader of Opposition and MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman said: “Gen Musharraf has broken his promise he made with the nation by refusing to shed his uniform.”

With regard to local adjustments made by various components of the MMA in the local polls, he said all parties could enter into alliances with other parties ‘by keeping the morals of the game’.

He said that by holding the local council polls on non-party basis the government had given a message to the outside world that the country could not hold free and fair elections.

He said the government had tried to suppress popular elements by getting their favourites elected through manipulations.

He said the MMA would have swept the polls and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League would have been eliminated had these elections been held on party basis.

The MMA, he said, would soon call conventions of ulema and seminary teachers to firm up its stand on the issue of seminary registration and curriculum.

He said that despite all coercive measures and manipulations people at large had reposed confidence in religious forces and had rejected ‘extremist Pervez Musharraf’.

He said the MMA leadership was of the view that the government should come out in the open if it desired to do away with the syllabus based on the Holy Quran and Hadith; otherwise it should allow the existing syllabus to be taught.

He said that action against seminary degrees was ill-intended. He said the Supreme Court’s decision about sanads would become ineffective after completion of elections.

Mr Liaquat Baloch said that the supreme council had taken serious notice of statements by some MMA leaders against others and banned such statements. However, he stressed, such statements did not affect the unity of MMA leaders. He said the meeting had dismissed the local body elections as massively rigged and manipulated.

The meeting described the recent amendment to the 1860 ordinance as discriminatory against seminaries and demanded its repeal and the registration of seminaries under the old law.