October 03, 2007	Wednesday	Ramazan 20, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 2: The All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) is considering to withdraw its support to Opposition Leader in the Senate Raza Rabbani after People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) decided not to join it and held negotiations with the military regime.

Talking to Dawn on Tuesday, MMA senator from Balochistan Dr Ismail Buledi said the APDM believed that the PPP was no more an opposition party after holding negotiations with the Musharraf regime on power sharing.

He said the APDM senators were in majority on the opposition benches and, therefore, they were not bound to support Mr Rabbani as opposition leader. He said the MMA was supporting Mr Rabbani only to maintain unity among the opposition ranks. He said the APDM senators were likely to meet in a couple of days to discuss the issue of its support to the PPP in the Senate for the office of the opposition leader.

In response to a question as to who will be the MMA’s candidate for the office of the opposition leader in the Senate, he said it would also be decided in the meeting.

It may be mentioned that at present the government has 58 and opposition 42 members, including 21 from the MMA and nine from the PPP, in the 100-member upper house.

However, after the passage of the controversial 17th Amendment in 2003, the PPP formed a group of opposition parties minus the MMA called Democratic Alliance which nominated Mr Rabbani as the candidate for the opposition leader.

The Democratic Alliance comprised the PPP, the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), Awami National Party (ANP) and Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP).

However, during the multi-party conference (MPC) held in London in March, all the parties of the alliance joined the newly-formed APDM leaving the PPP alone.