The Central Executive Committee session of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Sunday decided not to resign from the assemblies. As per sources, the party’s CEC session was chaired by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and the party leadership will conclude the CEC meeting today. The decisions taken will be announced at 2pm, sources within Bilawal House said.
Sources within the PPP said that the party leadership during the CEC meeting decided that PPP will neither leave PDM nor resign from assemblies. “PPP will not leave PDM as it made the opposition alliance,” according to sources privy to the details of the meeting.
The participants in PPP’s CEC meeting were of the view that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will be responsible if the opposition alliance –PDM breakdown. The meeting also agreed to expose “elements” trying to destroy PDM.
Later, Bilawal in a tweet confirmed that the PPP’s CEC meeting has been adjourned until tomorrow, said that it will resume in the morning. “Will be addressing the press early tomorrow afternoon,” he added.
Earlier it emerged that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari tore up show-cause notice served to his party by PDM over Senate opposition leader appointment.
According to sources privy to the details of the meeting, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari read the show-cause notice served to PPP by PML-N’s Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in the party’s CEC meeting being held here in Karachi.
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During the meeting, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari tore up the show-cause notice of PDM. His act was commended by the party leaders who were present in the CEC meeting, sources claimed.
Can PPP and PML-N stay together?
Although the PDM was created with an apparent purpose to topple Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, yet the main opposition parties i.e. PPP and PML-N now seem to victims of internal fights as a result of ruthless power politics.
The ruling party has persistently argued that this alliance of the opposition parties is “unnatural” and cannot sustain. PM’s Special Assistant Usman Dar said in a talk-show that the alliance is without any ideology and has no potential to threaten the government. “You will soon witness their internal fights,” he said.
Notably, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Monday mocked PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz and said that “there is a family in Lahore who used to get selected in the past”. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari gave this statement while talking to the media after meeting with Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Sirajul Haq in Lahore.
Similarly, sources and media reports said Zardari during the meeting asked Nawaz to return to Pakistan before the joint opposition could go with the nuclear option of resigning from the assemblies in order to mount pressure on the PTI-led government.
The crucial session of the PDM was held amid divisions within the alliance over the issue of submitting resignations from the assemblies at a time when its planned long march was just two weeks away.
Zardari, who like Nawaz addressed the meeting virtually, reportedly told the PML-N chief: “Mian sahab, we will hand over the resignations to you when you return home.”
Nawaz has been living in London since November 2019 after he was allowed to leave the country for medical treatment.
Zardari further said if Nawaz wanted the opposition parties to resign en masse, “then not only us, but everyone will have to go to jail”.
Talking about this month’s hotly contested Senate elections, Zardari said the opposition parties had challenged the government in the polls but regretted that PML-N Senator-elect Ishaq Dar, who is living in the UK in self-exile, had not participated in the voting, according to reports.
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“Nawaz Sharif sahib, return to the country along with Ishaq Dar; we will fight together,” the PPP leader was quoted as saying during the meeting.