Realignment on the way

The cat seems to have finally come out of the bag as after going through nine-month long tense relations, former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has resigned from his membership of both the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the National Assembly on Monday. Citing the bad governance and corruption of the ‘Zardari-led’ PPP government as one of the reasons for his resignation, Qureshi for the first time openly hurled accusations against PPP’s co-chairperson and President Asif Zardari before the media. He said, “There is no PPP. It has become a Zardari League. I announce that I will not remain associated with the Zardari League.” Qureshi accused President Zardari of departing from late Benazir Bhutto’s vision by joining hands with her enemies and termed the PPP’s alliance with the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) under its reconciliation policy as a negation of the Charter of Democracy (CoD). He called upon the opposition parties to join hands with the masses and strive for mid-term elections.

Mr Qureshi spent three years as the country’s foreign minister in the same Zardari-led PPP government. His relationship with President Zardari started to come under strain during the Raymond Davis episode. It came to a standoff when he was demoted from the ministry of foreign affairs to the ministry of water and power in February’s cabinet reshuffle. Later he was even stopped from attending the PPP Central Executive Committee (CEC) meetings. The unrelenting differences led Qureshi to end his 18-year old association with the party and quit his seat in parliament. Qureshi shares more or less the same allegations that other dissident leaders of the PPP level against President Zardari that he has hijacked the party and changed the party’s élan, character and ideology by installing his cronies in the federal cabinet since he came to power in 2008. A number of seasoned and loyal politicians of the PPP have distanced themselves from the party and disquiet has been visible in the party for some years, especially after the assassination of its chairperson Benazir Bhutto. Qureshi’s resignation seems to have widened this crack in the party. There is much hullabaloo over his decision as speculations of his alliance with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) or the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) are circulating all around. Interestingly, after Qureshi’s resignation, criticism started pouring in against him sooner than expected by the PPP members. Federal Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan who joined the PPP just before the 2008 elections envisaged the ‘political wilderness’ as Qureshi’s destiny, while spokesperson of the president, Frahatullah Babar, questioned the delay in Qureshi’s decision if he believed there were irregularities in the government’s affairs. The present hysterical reaction of the PPP owes itself to the apprehensions that the feudal grid in southern Punjab might follow Qureshi, who is a prominent political and religious figure in that region. Such a development would give a severe blow to the PPP's popularity in the region, the party’s main electoral base in Punjab. It is pertinent to mention here that the PPP’s emerging forward bloc has already endorsed the estranged leader’s decision. In this backdrop, if Qureshi joins another political party, either the PTI or the PML-N, it is only the PPP that is going to lose in the end. PTI chief Imran Khan has informally announced Qureshi’s induction in his party on November 27 at the PTI's rally in Ghotki. If this happens, the PTI’s momentum would gain further strength. No doubt, Khan’s public meeting in Lahore has created ripples in the otherwise stagnant waters of Pakistan’s politics, which is now in greater flux than ever. With Qureshi’s resignation, shifts and realignments in the country’s politics are on the way.