Daily Times

A meeting held recently in Islamabad and attended by four of the six component parties of the erstwhile MMA (Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal) has announced the decision to revive the religious conglomerate without taking two of their former colleagues on board. The parties that comprise now the revived MMA include Jamiat-i-Ulema-e-Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F), Jamiat-i-Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), Jamiat Ahle Hadith (JAH) and Islami Tehrik (IT). The left out parties are Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Jamiat-i-Ulema-e-Islam of Maulana Samiul Haq (JUI-S). However, a splinter group of the JUI-S led by Pir Abdul Rahim Naqashbandi has joined the four-party group announcing the revival of the MMA and attended the Islamabad meeting where the decision was taken. The revived MMA now consists of five parties.

Formed in 2002, the MMA had made a debut in the 2002 elections by capturing the majority of seats in the provincial assemblies of the former NWFP and Balochistan, securing an unprecedented 11.3 percent of the total votes, securing third position with 63 seats in the National Assembly after the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (128) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) (81). It was for the first time in the electoral history of Pakistan that religious parties were able to bag a sizeable chunk of the popular vote. The success was attributed to the formation of a common platform of religious parties to contest under a single election symbol and the public resentment created by the US attack on Afghanistan in October 2001. However, the alliance split on the issue of taking part in the 2008 elections. The JI and JUI-S decided to stay away from the 2008 elections, while the JUI-F decided to contest. This led to the creation of a wide gulf between the JUI-F — the most influential party of the alliance — and other components of the MMA, particularly JI. A serious effort by the leadership of the former allies had been underway for quite some time in the past few months to bridge this gulf and revive the MMA through consensus as the country transitioned to the next democratic elections.

However, instead of reaching a unanimous decision, the component parties of the former MMA slipped further away from each other on the issue of its revival as part of the religious parties’ strategy to avoid division of their votes in the next elections. The divergence of opinion was sharper between the JUI-F and JI — the two most influential parties of the former MMA. Both favoured the revival, but the JI put the JUI-F’s dissociation from the government in Balochistan as a precondition, whereas the JUI-F supported the revival without any preconditions. As the subsequent developments showed, the JI not only expanded the list of its preconditions, it also changed its focus on the pivotal demand for its consent to revive the MMA.

For example, the JI Ameer, Syed Munawwar Hasan, while addressing a rally in Buner on October 7 declared that there would be no alliance with the JUI-F as long as it continued to support the Pakistan People’s Party and other secular parties. This statement by the JI Ameer sounded very strange as the party had itself in the past been an ally of the secular NAP in the PNA in the 1970s and joined hands with the Communist Party of Pakistan in the Civil Liberties Movement in the 1950s. The real bone of contention between the two parties, as disclosed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, was the number of assembly seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) that JI wanted to be allocated in its favour before a decision on the revival of the MMA was made. In a statement in Islamabad on October 9, Maulana Fazlur Rehman accused the JI of resorting to blackmail on the issue of the revival of the MMA by demanding 50 percent of the national and provincial assembly seats in KP prior to announcing the revival of the MMA. In the same statement, the Maulana had hinted that the MMA would be revived without the JI. Commenting on the JUI-F chief’s statement, Liaqat Baloch, the secretary general of the JI, ridiculed the claim made by Maulana Fazlur Rehman on the number of assembly seats. He however admitted that during the talks held between the JI and JUI-F on the question of revival of the MMA, the former had insisted on the finalisation of a seat distribution formula before announcing the revival of the MMA.

Why has the JI insisted on the finalisation of a seat distribution formula before the MMA revival? What course is now left for the JI to follow in the politics of alliance in the run-up to the next elections after its ouster from the MMA?

The JI’s insistence on a seat distribution formula prior to the formal revival of the MMA is based on lessons it has learnt from its participation in not only the old MMA but in all previous political/electoral alliances such as the PNA and IJI. Undoubtedly, due to its organisational strength, the unmatched capacity to mobilise street power through a countrywide network of its dedicated, committed and trained workers and, above all, the vast resources it has managed to accumulate since the Afghan jihad, the JI activists were the backbone of the sustained agitation by the PNA and IJI. But the fruits of success of these campaigns were pocketed by others. The military was the beneficiary of the PNA movement, while the IJI’s success led to Mian Nawaz Sharif becoming the prime minister. This is the reason why Qazi Husain Ahmad opted for the Pakistan Islamic Front as the ‘third force’ in the 1993 elections. However, the bid failed and now the Jamaat has returned to the politics of alliance with likeminded parties. There are three shades of opinion in the JI on the issue of alliance with other likeminded parties. Qazi Husain Ahmad is a strong supporter of forming a broad based alliance of religious parties and therefore, he has tried to bring Maulana Fazlur Rehman around to his views on the revival of the MMA. A group led by Liaqat Baloch is in favour of seat adjustment arrangement with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The present Ameer, however, is inclined more towards the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) and opposed to having any truck with either the PML-N or JUI-F. Syed Munawar Hasan, repeatedly in his statements has held both the PML-N and JUI-F responsible for the sustenance of the PPP-led federal government by being its partners in Punjab and Balochistan respectively.

For the JI, the doors of the MMA are now closed. The Punjab-based JI group led by Liaqat Baloch and supported by the IJT is so powerful that a polls alliance with the PTI is out of the question. Ultimately, the JI will gravitate towards the PML-N for a seat adjustment arrangement. The PML-N would be more than willing to accept it as it hopes to benefit from such an arrangement against both the PPP and PTI.

The writer is a professor of International Relations at Sargodha University. He can be reached at Rashid_khan192@yahoo.com