Ex-president trying to oust Chaudhrys?

[LahoreEstate]

Sunday, July 05, 2009

By Tariq Butt

ISLAMABAD: The Chaudhrys appear convinced that former president and their erstwhile sworn leader Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf would make a concerted effort to pull the political rug from under their feet when the mandatory two-year ban on his active politics ends in November, according to PML-Q insiders.

“Musharraf’s modus operandi would be to try to assume the role of an intermediary between the PML-Q and the ‘dissidents’, who ‘replaced’ the Chaudhrys without any party election and by just holding a meeting of a few senior ‘Q’ leaders in Lahore on Saturday,” a PML-Q source close to the Chaudhrys told The News.

“We will not agree to give such a job to Musharraf because he is undoubtedly behind the partyís disintegration,” the source said, adding that the Chaudhrys would go ahead with their plan to hold early party elections.

It is ironical that the man, who had carved the PML-Q out of the PML-Nawaz, is now being accused of dividing the badly battered Q-League.

The participants of the Lahore meeting denied any role of Musharraf behind their move or giving him any key position in their grouping.

“We know Musharraf will be flying back to Pakistan around the expiration of the two years sanction to start practical politics,” another source said.

According to him, Musharraf sympathisers had endeavoured hard to get the forthcoming PML-Q elections put off till his return to the country so that ground was prepared for him to take over the party.

“It will be a different story if Musharraf joins the new party and gets some important berth in it,” the source said.

Another PML-Q stalwart explained that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s statement on Saturday that his party’s doors were open for Musharraf meant that he could join the PML-Q as an ordinary worker, not a top leader.

He said that despite this comment, the severe contempt that the Chaudhrys had developed for Musharraf over the past few months for his unending efforts to dislodge them was no secret.

“The PML has liberated itself from the legacies and mistakes of Musharraf, who has nothing to do with the politics of our party,” PML-Q Secretary General Mushahid Hussain Syed recently told this correspondent.

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