March 31, 2008	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 22, 1429

KARACHI, March 30: While the maiden session of the Sindh Assembly is scheduled to be held on April 5, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement is all set to withdraw its ‘unconditional’ support it had extended to the Pakistan People’s Party in the National Assembly by fielding its candidates for the slots of speaker and chief minister.

The talks initiated between the MQM chief, Altaf Hussain, and the PPP co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, which resulted in the MQM’s unconditional support to the PPP’s nominee for prime minister has hit snags in the absence of official talks between the central or provincial leaderships of the two parties for the formation of a coalition government in Sindh. While sitting on the opposition benches, the MQM voted in favour of Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani to demonstrate its unconditional support.

A senior party leader told Dawn that the MQM had decided to sit on the opposition benches in the provincial assembly. However, a final announcement in this regard would be made later.

“The dialogue for the government formation between the MQM and the PPP have not been initiated and till now there has not been any serious effort from the PPP to take the MQM onboard,” said Hyder Abbas Rizvi, MQM’s deputy parliamentary leader in the National Assembly.

He said that the MQM was a part of the opposition in the federation and would be a part of opposition in the province as well.

The MQM’s designated parliamentary leader in the Sindh Assembly, Syed Sardar Ahmed, told Dawn that his party was in the process of finalising its strategy regarding the April 5 session of the provincial assembly.

“Our parliamentary party meeting will be held in a day or two, probably on Tuesday, to finalise our strategy,” he said.

However, Mr Ahmed told Dawn that the PPP’s designated parliamentary leader in the Sindh Assembly, Pir Mazharul Haq, had called him to express his concern over the delay on convening the assembly session.

Apart from this informal contact, there had been no contact between the MQM and the PPP at the national or provincial levels, he said.

While the MQM claimed that it did not receive what it called ‘any serious message’ from the PPP, sources told Dawn that the MQM’s coordination committee was finalising party’s MPA-elect names for fielding them as candidates against the PPP nominees, Nisar Khuhro, and Syed Qaim Ali Shah, for the slot of the speaker and the chief minister respectively. The sources said that the MQM was also finalising names of its lawmakers for making a shadow cabinet in Sindh.