ISLAMABAD, Nov 26: After losing the race for prime minister, MMA and PPP are now eying for the position of the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly without entangling an alliance.

But the contest between the PPP and the MMA is likely to raise a lot of dust over their claims to the office whose holder — under the new arrangement — will also become a member of the National Security Council.

PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto has ruled out an alliance with the MMA because of ideological differences between the two camps, particularly over the current US-led international campaign against terrorism, despite their common domestic goals of parliamentary supremacy and an end to the military’s role in governance.

Therefore, the support of the PML-N and the role of the Speaker, Chaudhry Amir Hussain, will become a key factor in determining whether the opposition to Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali will be led by the PPP’s soft-spoken parliamentary leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim or MMA’s firebrand leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed.

The PPP says it has the first right to the opposition leader’s office because it remains the second largest group with 70 members in the 342-seat House despite being diminished by the defection of 10 members.

But the 58-member MMA says it is more qualified for the position because its prime ministerial candidate Maulana Fazlur Rehman had finished second in Thursday’s contest for prime minister’s office with 86 votes — with the help of PML-N’s 19 votes — against Mr Jamali’s 172 and PPP’s Shah Mahmud Qureshi’s 70.

“We will like to have a united opposition from the platform of the ARD,” a PPP spokesman told Dawn on Tuesday about the future role of the 15-party grouping that presented a spectacle of indecision and disunity in the abortive race for prime ministership.

The PPP and PML-N both are the main ARD components, and PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said they together would be the largest opposition group in the National Assembly.

But he said a final ARD decision on who would be the opposition leader was likely to be taken at a meeting of the alliance leaders — now busy in political wheeling-dealing in the provinces — after Ramazan.

“We are quite hopeful about it,” he said about the chances of the opposition leader’s slot going to Mr Fahim, whose initial bid for prime ministership was killed by the ARD disunity.

But PML-N spokesman Mohammad Siddiqul Farooq said his party was still undecided about the issue that it would like to be discussed at the ARD platform as well as with the MMA “to take a principled decision”.

“We are committed to revive the 1973 Constitution and reject the LFO. Therefore, we should take a collective stance for the furtherance of this cause,” he said.

A Jamaat-i-Islami spokesman, Shahid Shamsi, said it was a recognized parliamentary tradition that a person securing the highest number of votes became the Leader of House and the group coming second got the opposition leader’s slot.

But another PPP official, Nazir Dhoki, said this had not been the practice in the past National Assembly, where the PPP’s former defence minister Aftab Shaban Meerani had contested and lost the previous prime ministerial election against Nawaz Sharif in 1997 but Ms Bhutto became the opposition leader. Similarly in 1973, Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan leader Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani put up a symbolic contest against PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto but the then National Awami Party leader Abdul Wali Khan became the opposition leader.

Mr Shamsi said an MMA supreme council meeting had already decided on JI chief Qazi’s candidacy for the opposition leader when it had named him as parliamentary leader and JUI leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman as the prime ministerial candidate.

Dismissing reports of differences between the JI and the JUI over the issue, he said the MMA supreme council would meet after Ramazan to review “all things” but the candidacy for the opposition leader was a settled matter.

An opposition leader gets an office in the National Assembly, an official residence, a car, free telephone and some staff, and is looked upon as an alternative leader in a political crisis.

The opposition leader will also be on the 13-member NSC that President Musharraf has been empowered to head under one of his controversial constitutional amendments opposed by opposition parties.

The prime minister, Senate chairman, NA speaker, chief ministers, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee chairman and chiefs of staff of the army, navy and air force are to be the other 11 members of the NSC, which the LFO says will “serve as a forum for consultation on strategic matters pertaining to the sovereignty, integrity and security of the state, and the matters relating to democracy, governance and inter-provincial harmony”.