PESHAWAR, Dec 13: Pro-government and opposition parties seem to have stepped up their efforts to bring regional and religious parties and groups into their electoral alliances before March ostensibly to defeat the Pakistan People’s Party.

The PML like-minded group wants to enter into an alliance with the Pakistan Awami Tehreek, the Millat Party Pakistan, the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Haqiqi), the Sindh National Front, the Awami National Party, the PPP (Sherpao), the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Karachi-based religious groups.

A new political party — being launched under the name of the Qaumi Jamhoori Party through a merger of some NGOs, workers’ federations and the left-overs of socialist groups — is said to be joining hands with the establishment’s horse.

Federal Minister Omar Asghar Khan, who has decided to resign from the government on Dec 30, will be the president of the proposed QJP.

Abid Hasan Minto, Yusuf Mastikhan, Mukhtar Bacha, Gul Rehman, Khursheed Anwar, other labour and peasant leaders, social activists and Nazims will be leading the new party.

A former leader of the Tehrik-i-Istiqlal has said that the QJP will not enter into any alliance of the like-minded group.

According to a PML-N provincial leader, they are trying to enter into an alliance with the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F), the Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (Noorani) and the Balochistan National Party (Bazinjo). “We are also trying to bring the JUI (Sami) and other Punjab-based smaller religious groups into our alliance.”

Both the alliances will be contesting against the PPP, whose role is said to have been rejected by the establishment in the general election to be held in October next year.

The military government, sources said, was considering appointing Chief Justice Irshad Hasan Khan new election commissioner for his decisive role during the political crisis in the country.

The MQM, the Pakhtunkhawa Milli Awami Party, the Awami National Party and the Pakistan National Awami Party are the three main regional parties, which have their specific demands on certain issues. Neither the PML like-minded group nor the PML-N are in a position to satisfy all the three parties due to their pro-establishment stance.

The PPP has accused the government for launching a king’s party (but it is confined to an electoral alliance) against it. The QJP can be a king’s party, but the cadres it is trying to bring into its fold will never go with the PML (like-minded) whom they paint as Golkar party (launched by Suharto in Indonesia after the military coup in 1967).

A PPP leader has claimed that the government is conspiring to form a Bonn-style government in which the like-minded group will be getting the lion’s share like the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and a man from southern Punjab will be installed as prime minister.