Conflicting statements from parties confusing supporters

Lahore: Conflicting statements from Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), two major components of the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD), are confusing their voters and sympathisers.

On March 16, the PPP chose not to take part in a protest rally convened by the PML-N over the suspension of Pakistan's chief justice. It was attended only by the PML-N, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) leadership. The provincial leadership of the opposition parties, including Zulfikar Ali Khosa, PML-N Punjab president, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, PPP Punjab president, Liaqat Baloch, a senior leader of the MMA and Ahsan Rasheed, provincial president of the PTI, announced in a press conference on March 14 that they would take part in the rally.

Campaigns

In another press conference on November 17, Qureshi and Khosa said the opposition's alliance would soon start a series of anti-government campaigns but there has been no progress in this regard so far.

In the same press conference, Qureshi said that the PPP and PML-N had joined hands in the struggle to restore democracy. But both the parties, on numerous occasions, were seen scoring points for their respective parties from the platform of ARD.

The recent example was during the March 26 protest rally, where both were witnessed trying to get political mileage separately. On March 5, differences emerged between the leadership of the two parties over the proposed joint declaration of All Parties Conference regarding the option of boycotting the polls. The leaders of the PML-N and PPP were subsequently approached to get their points of view but both gave conflicting statements.