Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is not 'optimistic at all' that other political parties will support its demand for forming a national government ahead of parliamentary polls but still plans to contact them, party officials said.
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and a Pushtoon nationalist group outrightly rejected when PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif formally floated the idea three days ago. But a spokesperson for Sharif told Business Recorder on Friday the former premier believed that the government of all political parties could steer Pakistan out of uncertainty regardless of how others conceived it.
"We don't need endorsement (for our demand) either from the government or from any political party...we know this is what suits Pakistan best," said Zahim Qadri, a personal spokesman for Nawaz Sharif, "But if our leaders decide, we can talk to them."
Qadri said a central executive committee (CEC) of PML-N that met last month would again meet in days to decide how other parties should be taken onboard about the demand.
Parliamentary polls in Pakistan are due next month but Sharif wants a rescheduling for an indefinite period to give way to the formation of a national government without any role by President Musharraf and reestablishment of an independent election commission.
Other parties also have reservations about the credibility of polls under President Pervez Musharraf and they do doubt the impartiality of the Election Commission but do not press for the national government.
"If other parties too, can't work with Musharraf, then why they contest elections under him. Ultimately, they will have to come to what we are demanding today," said another PML-N leader, who didn't want to be named.
Sharif, the man ousted by Musharraf in a bloodless coup eight years ago, has said that a solution to Pakistan's problems lies in stepping down of the president and subsequent formation of a national government without him.
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