The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) said on Tuesday that it has submitted its resignations to the president of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) as announced by Chairman Bilawal Bhutto a day earlier.
“We submitted the resignations of Sherry Rehman, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and Qamar Zaman Kaira to Maulana Fazlur Rehman,” Nayyar Hussain Bukhari, a senior PPP leader told a private TV channel. Bukhari delivered the resignations of the three party stalwarts at the residence of the anti-government alliance’s chief after PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari gave a written approval.
Ashraf was PDM’s vice president while the other two were members of the steering committee.
“The PPP laid the foundation for the PDM,” Bukhari said when asked if PDM could remove the PPP from the alliance. “No political party [in the PDM] has the jurisdiction to remove us. There is no mention of this in the 26-point charter. The PDM is not a political party. It was an alliance to dislodge the government,” he maintained.
Bukhari said Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the secretary general of the PDM, took a ‘U-turn’ by first calling the notice issued to PPP a show-cause notice and later said that the PDM was only asking for an explanation. “If they wanted an explanation, they could have called us and discussed the matter in a PDM meeting. We would have replied,” the PPP leader added.
Bukhari said that the PPP can launch its own anti-government movement by staging protests in Ramazan against the government’s policies on the central bank, the IMF and inflation in the country.
The PDM, an alliance of 10 opposition political parties, was formed in September last year to launch an anti-government movement. But earlier this month, differences began to emerge within its ranks. First, the Awami National Party (ANP) announced it was quitting from its positions in the PDM. Then on Monday, the second largest opposition party in the country, PPP, also announced to step down from the offices allotted to it in the PDM. The ANP’s and PPP’s decision comes after the PDM leadership sent the two political parties a show-cause notice to explain why they sought support from allies of the ruling party to get a PPP politician appointed leader of the opposition in the Senate.
