PPP Chief Bilawal Bhutto says he said 'no' to PML-N's power-sharing formula

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto has rejected a power-sharing formula proposed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) wherein it was offered that the prime minister’s office would be shared by the two parties.

Bhutto instead announced former president and his father Asif Ali Zardari as PPP’s presidential candidate. “I was told [by PML-N] that let us be the prime minister for three years and then you can take the premiership for the remaining two years,” Bhutto said as he addressed a rally in Pakistan’s Thatta.

He added, “I said no to this. I said I do not want to be a prime minister like this. If I become the prime minister, it would be after the people of Pakistan elect me.”

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The 35-year-old former foreign minister was the prime ministerial face of the PPP. However, in the February 8 elections, his party came third with 54 seats in the National Assembly, behind more than 90 seats won by independents backed by jailed prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N.

To form a government, a party must win 133 seats out of 265 contested seats in the 266-member National Assembly.

Bhutto’s PPP and Sharif’s PML-N forged an alliance following the poll but have not been able to reach a consensus on seat sharing despite several meetings between the top leadership.

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“To control the fire spreading in the country, we have decided that Zardari will be our candidate for the presidential election. And when he takes up the post, he will put out this fire, and will save the Centre and the provinces,” he said.

He said the country needed a political party that talked about people’s problems, adding that the brewing economic and political crisis had divided society.

‘Not appropriate to divulge details’

Reacting to Bhutto’s comment on the power-sharing formula, PML-N leader Ishaq Dar said that it was not appropriate of him to divulge those details.

He insisted that the PPP chairman had made the time-sharing formula public but that was just one aspect and there could be more formulas.

Dar said the plan to form a government with the PPP and Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) was still on as he pointed out that there was no other choice available to them.

With inputs from agencies