LAHORE, June 16: The Alliance for Restoration of Democracy will be kept intact despite the fact that its major components, the PPP and the PML(N), will be putting up candidates against each other in the October elections, the PML(N) chairman told Dawn on Sunday.

Raja Zafarul Haq said that his party and the PPP realized that the alliance should be allowed to stay on even during and after the elections.

He said both the former ruling parties had learnt from their past experience that now they should be more accommodative in their attitude and cooperate with each other to enable the future parliament to complete its constitutional tenure.

The ARD is not an election alliance, and there is no move to make it one. Generally, such alliances break before the elections and their components go to the electorate from their respective platforms to win their support.

“The ARD is going to stay united or it would have disintegrated immediately after Gen Musharraf had announced that the elections will be held between Oct 7 and 11,” the PML(N) chief insisted.

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that since the ARD was yet to achieve the objectives for which it had been set up, there was a dire need to keep it in existence.

“Since the election schedule has not been announced as yet, it is still time for joint struggle. The question of ARD’s fate will be decided when the stage for the elections is set and the alliance’s demand for free and fair election is met.”

Another important ARD leader said on the condition of anonymity that in case the ARD ceased to exist, parties in the coalition could continue to work for their objectives even after the elections, though from a different platform. “We set up many alliances in the past and there will be nothing unusual if a new one is set up to meet the requirements of the changed situation.”

The leader, however, thought that the ARD should be retained.