Click to play videoNew Delhi: Pakistan went to polls on February 18 and the results were announced the next day but the country is still without a prime minister.
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Co-Chairman Asif Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif are expected to meet in Islamabad on Sunday to finalise a power-sharing deal.
An aide to Sharif said there had been progress in talks between the two sides on forming a coalition government.
But Pakistani media reports indicated continuing deadlock over restoration of the judiciary and how to deal with President Pervez Musharraf.
The suspense over whom the PPP will choose as its nominee for prime minister also continues.
Senior leader of PPP Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who was considered the frontrunner to become the prime minister, is feeling humiliated and betrayed and said that there is a growing feeling in the party that Zardari, is causing unnecessary delays in naming him the prime ministerial 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 prime ministerial candidate.
Just days after PPP chief Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Zardari had said that Benazir 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.
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