The parliament and four provincial assemblies will elect the 13th president of the country today (Tuesday) in a three-way contest after the last minute efforts of opposition groups to jointly contest polls against the ruling coalition’s candidate Dr Arif Alvi failed to yield results.
Hectic efforts by the opposition groups to win each other’s support continued till late Monday night. However, later they blamed each other for the division, which will benefit Alvi whose party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), expects an easy win.
On Monday afternoon, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Fazlur Rehman – who is also the candidate of opposition groups led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) – had a meeting with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari.
Fazl insisted that the PPP withdraw its candidate, Aitzaz Ahsan, in his favour but Zardari refused and rather asked Fazl to retire and support PPP’s Aitzaz. After long parlays, Fazl proposed that the PPP should approach and convince the PML-N chief Shehbaz Sharif if it wants him to withdraw.
Samaa News
