Tension and bitterness gripped the recent meeting of Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain with President Pervez Musharraf when the latter asked the former to step down from the party. “Chaudhry Sahib, your health doesn't warrant your continuation as the PML-Q president, therefore, you should call it a day and de-link yourself from the party,” a high-level PML-Q source told this correspondent, quoting Musharraf as urging Shujaat in the meeting. He said this was the fourth time over the past few months when the president asked Hussain to leave the PML-Q stewardship. “I was elected by 3,000 members of the PML-Q General Council that can only remove me,” the PML-Q chief said. Musharraf, according to the source, told Hussain that if he and his cousin Chaudhry Pervez Elahi say goodbye to the PML-Q and Hamid Nasir Chattha becomes its president, it would be acceptable to Pakistan People's Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Zardari for cooperation. Musharraf wants the PML-Q minus the Chaudhrys to be ‘friendly opposition' for some time to show its good behavior. The source said that Musharraf believes that because of his excellent relations with slain Benazir Bhutto, Chattha was acceptable to Zardari to the extent that they would be comfortable to work together. “The offer for the PML-Q is that it may be part of the PPP governments at the federal level and in the Punjab in place of the PML-Nawaz,” the president told Hussain, when the latter asked what was on plate in exchange for relinquishing the PML-Q stewardship. In the highly tense meeting, Hussain then informed Musharraf that at 12 midnight on the election day (Feb. 18) he was told by an intelligence colonel when he was sitting with PML-Q leader Imran Masood that he has won his Gujrat seat. But he said he got another call from the same person after two hours in which he was told that he has lost because “his success was not cleared from the above.” The PML-Q chief then said that how come (his brother) Wajahat and (his nephew) Monis Elahi, who won their seats in Gujrat, were more popular than him? The source said that Hussain told the president that the PML-Q was robbed of at least 18 National Assembly seats including those of Hamayun Akhtar and Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri. Without paying any serious attention to his claims, Musharraf said in a casual way that it was now an old story that should not be talked about any longer. “All this was done for the credibility of the elections at our cost,” the PML-Q chief said. He further told Musharraf that he and Mushahid Hussain Saiyed were elected by the General Council as president and secretary general respectively in Aug. 2006 for three years, and they have announced that they would not be candidate for the party positions after the expiration of their present term. A senior PML-Q leader remarked that there was now no doubt left in the top hierarchy of the party that the president has ditched the Chaudhrys as he has found new political allies. “Although Musharraf says he has Zardari in his pocket, I don't believe that the PPP chief has told the president that he is prepared for cooperation with the PML-Q if Chaudhrys are dispensed with,” the PML-Q leader said. Musharraf's urging to Hussain to quit the party leadership has been so depressing for the Chaudhrys that Pervez Elahi recently said that Shujaat was not a grade 18 government officer, who could be dismissed like a civil servant. __
