ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has convened a meeting of the party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) in Karachi on Dec 29 to discuss a host of important issues, including the proposal of en masse resignations from the national and provincial assemblies as part of the opposition’s anti-government campaign from the platform of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).

On the one hand, the party is deliberating the issue of resigning from the assemblies and, on the other hand, it has invited applications from candidates for party tickets for the upcoming by-elections in eight constituencies of the national and provincial assemblies.

Meanwhile, the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) is still undecided whether or not it should participate in the by-elections due to a lack of consensus on the issue.

“We are yet to decide about it. There are two conflicting viewpoints [in the party]. Some say we should participate and some say we should boycott,” said senior vice president of the PML-N and former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi while talking to Dawn here on Tuesday.

Party invites applications from candidates for by-elections

Mr Abbasi said that a “consultative process” was going on within the party and they had also discussed the issue during recent informal meetings, but they failed to reach a consensus. He said a formal meeting on the issue was expected in the next couple of days to finalise the strategy in this regard.

In response to a question, Mr Abbasi said that he personally believed that the party should take part in the by-elections since no decision had so far been made by the PDM regarding en masse resignations from the assemblies.

“Until there is a PDM decision to resign and if elections are held then in my personal opinion one should participate in it,” said the former prime minister.

Talking to Dawn, PPP secretary general and former Senate chairman Nayyar Bokhari said that the party convened its CEC meeting every year in Naudero at the death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto. However, he said, this time the PPP was hosting the other PDM leaders in Larkana for a public meeting and, therefore, the party chairman had convened the meeting in Karachi two days after Ms Bhutto’s death anniversary on Dec 27.

Responding to a question, Mr Bokhari said the resignation issue would also come under discussion in the meeting as the party chairman had already announced that any such decision would be taken after deliberations at the CEC.

It was after a meeting of the heads of the PDM constituent parties in Islamabad on Dec 8 that president of the opposition alliance Maulana Fazlur Rehman had announced that all the national and provincial lawmakers belonging to the opposition would hand over their resignations individually to the heads of their parties by Dec 31.

The Maulana had announced the decision during a press talk after presiding over a more than four-hour-long summit of the alliance which was also addressed by PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif and former president Asif Zardari through video link from London and Karachi, respectively.

The PDM leadership, however, had failed to come up with an agreed plan regarding the use of their most lethal weapon of en masse resignations and its timing and Maulana Fazl simply announced that the steering committee of the PDM would meet in Islamabad the next day “to decide the schedule for further rallies and demonstrations and the date for long march towards Islamabad”.

The next day, however, before the meeting of the steering committee could take place, the PDM leaders once again gathered at the residence of the Maulana over a luncheon meeting after which PPP chairman Bhutto-Zardari categorically declared that his party would come out with a final decision regarding en masse resignations after discussing it at its CEC.

Sources in the PDM said that the PPP leaders during the meeting were not very enthusiastic to the proposed move and Mr Zardari was not in favour of Nawaz Sharif’s proposal to hand over the resignations to Maulana Fazl for future use and it was on his proposal that finally other parties agreed on the PPP’s suggestion that the resignations should be collected by the party heads.

Meanwhile, the PPP has invited applications from those who want to contest the by-elections on the party ticket by Dec 26. The candidates have been asked to write applications in the name of Asif Ali Zardari, who is the president of the PPP-Parliamentarians, the faction registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).

The ECP had last week decided to immediately hold by-elections in eight constituencies of national and provincial assemblies, which had been pending because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2020