Senior leaders in Pakistan’s unpopular coalition government met for crisis talks yesterday after its second-largest partner announced its ministers were quitting the federal Cabinet.
President Asif Ali Zardari held talks with Interior Minister Rehman Malik and close ally Qaim Ali Shah, chief minister of southern Sindh province, at his Karachi bungalow to avoid any possibility of becoming a minority government.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) said on Monday it was withdrawing its two ministers from the federal Cabinet – a move that could threaten the narrow parliamentary majority of Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
“The President doesn’t want to lose MQM’s support and is in no mood to accept his ministers’ resignations,” a PPP leader told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“The Interior Minister is in contact with the MQM leadership to settle the differences.”
MQM spokesman Wasay Jaleel told AFP that the party had sent the resignation of Farooq Sattar, Minister for Overseas Pakistanis, to the presidency while the resignation of Ports and Shipping Minister Babar Ghauri would be sent later.
The MQM has so far stopped short of leaving the coalition, raising the prospect that a deal could be reached to prevent them from joining the opposition.
The party has 25 lawmakers in the national assembly but only two ministers in the federal Cabinet.
If accepted, the MQM resignations would be a blow just weeks after the country’s most prominent religious party took its three Cabinet ministers and seven lawmakers out of the government, sparking fears of a domino effect.
The religious party’s leader and Pakistan’s most prominent Islamic politician, pro-Taliban cleric Fazlur Rehman, said there was no chance of rejoining the government and demanded Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani resign.
“The Prime Minister should resign and the PPP should appoint a new one,” Rehman told reporters.
His Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUIF) party walked out on December 14 after Mr Gilani sacked one of its three Cabinet ministers over a war of words with Religious Affairs Minister Hamid Saeed Kazmi, a PPP member, who was also fired.