LAHORE, July 19: The Pakistan Muslim League and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal said on Friday they had agreed to continue negotiations for electoral adjustments in the forthcoming polls.
Briefing newsmen after a meeting of the committees constituted by the MMA and the PML for negotiating with other parties “to explore possibilities of electoral adjustment and alliance with other parties,” Liaquat Baloch claimed that the two parties would like to cooperate with each other in the October polls.
PML’s Punjab president Sirdar Zulfiqar Khosa said “it was the first official contact between the MMA and his party. Both have agreed to explore possibilities for cooperation.”
Mr Baloch said the MMA components had agreed to “take part in the polls from a single platform and wanted to reach electoral adjustments with other political parties. Today’s meeting must be seen in the same context.” “Today,” he said, both the parties determined the priorities for the forthcoming polls and the points of agreement,” he said.
“The negotiating teams would now present their reports on today’s meeting to their leadership for a decision,” Hafiz Husain Ahmad said in response to a question. “The negotiating teams,” he said, “are not competent to take any decision on their own.”
Answering a question about recent contacts between the MMA and the PML(Quaid-i-Azam), Mr Baloch said the MMA was “contacting all the political parties in the country.” However, he added, no “formal” negotiation had taken place on the issue of electoral cooperation with the PML(QA).
Khwaja Saad Rafiq, PML’s Punjab general secretary, said his party had formed a committee (headed by Mr Khosa) for talks with the other parties for cooperation in October polls at the national level. He added that the PML would also dicuss the issue with the Pakistan People’s Party. He denied reports that an agreement had already been reached.
“If adjustments are made with any party or alliance, those will be at the national level. These are not local polls,” he added.
Meanwhile, a declaration issued by the MMA and the PML said they had rejected the constitutional amendments packages given by the military regime because it was not competent to amend the Constitution. They said the job of amending the constitution must be left to the parliament. They also agreed to “jointly” struggle for the revival of democracy and the Constitution. The declaration demanded that an interim government headed by a former chief justice of Pakistan be established to hold general elections. It said the members of the interim government should be barred from taking part in the polls.
It also called for reorganization of the Election Commission of Pakistan to make it an independent body. It rejected the decision to increase the number of seats in assemblies and restoration of joint electorate.