ISLAMABAD: At least eight of thirteen political parties that attended Allama Tahirul Qadri-hosted All Parties Conference (APC) are hardly interested in electoral politics for having no say in this arena and are always in search of short-cuts for aggrandizement in the political field.
However, of them five parties certainly have to their credit definite electoral gains and future prospects. They were apparently unwilling to rock the democratic boat because they believed they would be losers if they go with the spoilers’ view.
A predominant majority of the entities that turned up in the APC were just paper parties, having little public following, which too is limited to a negligible number of areas. They have never won even any federal or provincial seat.
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) enjoy good public appeal and have the capacity to clinch seats in different regions.
However, Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), which had been midwifed by Pervez Musharraf and had won the rigged 2002 general elections owing to his patronage, stands nowhere in the political ground as was evidenced in the 2013 polls. Similarly, with the passage of time the Jamaat-e-Islami has also become exceedingly weak in the electoral ring.
Mustafa Kamal’s Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) is still to demonstrate its electoral power, if any, as it is yet to contest an election. Even the host, the PAT, has nothing to offer that it has ever achieved in the electoral politics.
Allama Qadri was elected to the National Assembly only once and that too in the dubious 2002 polls from a Lahore constituency.
The other parties that were part of the APC deliberations were big political nonentities. Some of them like for example those represented by Sheikh Rashid and Jamshed Dasti were just one-man parties. The names of most of the remaining attendees are hardly ever heard.
By becoming part of the APC, they desperately wanted to be mentioned in politics in one way or the other so that they are also counted and cited.
Since the paper tigers have no stake in the present assemblies and are unexpected to have any in future, they pressed others that have an important say in the legislatures to walk out of them to rock the system. Two major forces – the PTI and PPP – were opposed to using the resignation card.
The political nobodies can’t get even a solitary federal or provincial seat and also are not in a position to add a significant number of votes to any force they will be aligned with.
Qadri’s main reliance is on the PTI and PPP, which, however, do not wish to go beyond a certain limit. In reality, all the parties that were present in the APC desired in the heart of their hearts the PAT to take the plunge so that they could benefit from the consequences because in any case Qadri is unlikely to get anything out of the mess so created.
The APC joint communique also called on the federal legislature and provincial assemblies to pass resolutions, demanding of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah to step down.
Obviously, the Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies will approve such motions due to the domination of the PPP and PTI in them respectively. Same will happen in the opposition-controlled Senate. But such resolutions will not only be rejected by the Punjab, Balochistan and National Assembly but these legislatures will instead pass motions dismissing the APC call.
The ten-point joint statement clearly indicated that the APC has a political agenda – rattle the federal and Punjab governments – to achieve and its effort is not confined to just seeking justice for the Model Town tragedy victims.
When the APC was being held, the mind and heart of every participant like other political players in Pakistan was pondering over the abrupt visit of the Sharif brothers to Saudi Arabia. They thought that their entire activity would be nullified and overtaken by the outcome of this trip.
As the APC was in progress, Rana Sanaullah’s claim that he had held four rounds of talks with a senior PAT leader to determine the amount of compensation for the heirs of Model Town victims, which was not denied by the person concerned, signified that the deal would have been struck had the law minister agreed to the amount demanded by the other side.
There would have been nothing wrong if such an agreement had been reached because the victims in any case need to be compensated as they do not want politics like politicians are unfortunately engaged in over the dead bodies of their near and dear ones.
The federal and Punjab governments came under pressure due to the APC, but they were satisfied with the fact that none of their allied parties slipped away to this conference. All of them continued to stand with the PML-N.
