Daily Times

The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) still remains indecisive on coming out with a concrete plan to execute its earlier announcement of launching an anti-government protest as well as approaching the Supreme Court (SC) against the passage of three ‘controversial’ laws by the parliament recently.

The joint sitting, on November 17, passed three bills including Elections (Second Amendment) Bill, 2021, Granting Right of Vote to Overseas Pakistanis and The Bill to give the right of appeal to Indian prisoner Kulbhushan Jadhav.

Soon after the session, the opposition parties announced at a presser outside the Parliament House that they would go to the apex court against the legislations.

The opposition also claimed that they would launch a countrywide anti-government protest campaign. However, despite passage of over three weeks, no development has occurred so far.

Sources privy to the matter told Daily Times that the alliance was facing differences over some key points of the strategy.

“Some senior members of JUI-F in the PDM favour resignations from the assemblies before the formal launch of the campaign, while the PML-N opposes this proposal,” confided a PDM member to Daily Times.

He said the PML-N had opined that the resignations move will be effective when all opposition parties in the parliament, including the PPP, tender their resignations, otherwise, it would be a futile exercise.

Another meeting of the steering committee of PDM was held under the chairmanship of former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Sunday.

As per announcement, some recommendations about the long march and resignations from assemblies were made which will be presented in a meeting of PDM heads on Monday (today).

When contacted, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi avoided speaking on the matter.

“All related decisions would become formally public after the main meet-up of the PDM tomorrow,” he told Daily Times.

According to the well-informed sources, the PDM is facing difficulty in achieving any headway, as there are two significant divisions in the alliance with one group, supported by Maulana, opining that all anti-government steps should be taken after complete resignations from the Parliament and another group, mainly consisting of PML-N, opposing this idea.

Besides this, the two groups also have different viewpoints on the issue of boycotting the upcoming local government elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, sources said, adding that the JUI-F wanted the PML-N and other opposition parties to boycott the local bodies polls.

The PML-N believes that they should not leave the field open to the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and its allies.

In the last meeting of PDM, Fazl was so furious with the PML-N leadership that at one stage, he reportedly even offered to quit the opposition alliance’s presidency. However, Nawaz Sharif persuaded him not to do so and sought time till December 6 for in-house consultations.

It was the third meeting of the heads of the component parties in six weeks besides a number of meetings of the steering committee after which the alliance leaders had announced that they were deferring the plan to launch a decisive and final phase of the anti-government protest.

When contacted, spokesperson for the PDM Hafiz Hamad Ullah said there was nothing like deadlock among the PDM parties on any matter.

To a question, he claimed “Actually, we want to make each decision with consensus and maintain unity among the PDM component parties.”