Click to play videoNew Delhi: Senior leader of the Pakistan’s Peoples Party, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, is feeling humiliated and betrayed.
The man, who was considered front-runner for the post of Pakistan’s Prime Minister, has said that there is a growing feeling in the party that its Co-Chairperson, Asif Zardari, is causing unnecessary delays in naming him the PM candidate.
This has caused "some disturbance within the party" and "there is a feeling on the streets that I am being insulted, humiliated and betrayed,” the PPP vice-president told The News. Party members have said they have given Zardari the mandate to nominate the PM candidate.
Days after PPP chief Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Zardari had told the press that Benazir had wanted Fahim to be the PPP’s prime ministerial candidate.
But in a move calculated to strengthen the PPP in the politically crucial province of Punjab – which is also the PML-N’s stronghold – the party’s top leadership has been considering a proposal to name a prime ministerial candidate from the province, clearly intending that Fahim, who hails from Sindh, be set aside.
The PPP had also met on Thursday to discuss nominees for the candidate for the post of PM but the meeting proved inconclusive. Zardari has since been meeting MPs from across the country separately.
Fahim, meanwhile, warned that Zardari ought avoid any action that would divide the party.
"Mr Zardari should try to keep the PPP intact by avoiding splits in its ranks till the time Bilawal Bhutto Zardari takes over the command of the party from him,” Fahim said. “I don’t expect from Zardari that he would bring someone else as the prime minister forcibly.”
Fahim added that he has not directly spoken to Zardari over this issue and said that neither of them had found the time to discuss it.
Lately, some of the names that have emerged as frontrunners for the PM candidate are Ahmed Mukhtar, Yusuf Geelani and Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
The PPP had swept Pakistan’s elections last month and had announced its intention of forming a government with the backing of Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N and the ANP.
With inputs from agencies
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