ISLAMABAD, 20 June 2004 — Parliamentarians of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), who have met President Pervez Musharraf several times, said that there might be a major political change in the country in a month’s time.
They said the president assured them that the present “political crisis” would settle down within a month or so. “My assessment is that a major change is in the offing,” a PML parliamentarian said, adding that the situation would become clear after the budget was passed.
The president has started meeting PML parliamentarians to personally listen to their grievances as they have been complaining of being ignored. They said: “We told the president that he is our leader and we all look to him (for leadership).”
They also told the president about the “communication gap” between them and the PML leadership and that the prime minister never bothered to interact with them and they had to wait for months to meet him. Similarly, some of them also had reservations over the “conduct” of the Chaudhrys of Gujarat, they added.
Surprisingly, Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali and PML President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain have not been in any of the meetings between the president and the PML parliamentarians. “The president does not appear to be depending on the Chaudhrys any more,” another PML parliamentarian said.
A majority of these parliamentarians think that these meetings appear to be an exercise by the president to make up his mind whether an “in-house” change is necessary to end the continuing wrangling within the PML.
These parliamentarians are unanimous in their opinion that if the situation remains unchanged, an “in-house” change will certainly take place.
“The president seems unhappy with the differences between Chaudhry Shujaat and Jamali,” one of the parliamentarians said, adding that the president’s concern was to strengthen the PML so that it could get a two-thirds majority at the next elections.
They said the president had made it clear to them that there was no possibility of any deal with Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif. “Don’t worry, they will not come,” a parliamentarian quoted President Musharraf as saying at the Friday meeting.
