Yousuf Raza Gilani urges federal government to honour agreement made with PPP

According to The Express Tribune, former Pakistani Prime Minister and Senate Chairman Yousaf Raza Gillani has urged the federal government to uphold the agreement it signed with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and reaffirmed that the PPP has never served in the federal cabinet and will not do so in the future.

Gillani told reporters in Islamabad that the PPP had supported the government. Nevertheless, it had never joined the cabinet and had no intention of doing so.

He said, “The government needs to implement the written agreement it made with us.” According to The Express Tribune, a former prime minister of Pakistan said that the PPP had difficulties with the federal government and that discussions were still in progress to resolve them.

He said, “Everyone will be notified as soon as a decision is made. The best method to settle issues is to have a conversation.

According to a report by The Express Tribune, his comments coincide with ongoing talks between the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), during which the former is demanding that the conditions of the agreement be implemented.

The second round of talks between the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) concluded last week without any fruitful results. According to Dawn, the parties are scheduled to meet again on December 24 or 25.

The PPP stuck to its demand that a formal agreement between the two parties be implemented at the meeting, which was held in the speaker’s chambers of the National Assembly.

The PPP was represented at the meeting by Raja Pervez Ashraf, Naveed Qamar, and Syed Kursheed Shah, while the government was represented by Pakistan’s Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and Speaker of the Pakistani Assembly Ayaz Sadiq.

Following the meeting, the PPP chairman received an update from the PPP delegation on the status of the negotiations with the government. According to Dawn, the two sides will reconvene on December 24 or 25 before the December 26 meeting of the PPP Central Executive Committee, when the results of these discussions would be presented for a final approval by the PPP’s senior leadership.

One of the main concerns brought up by the PPP at the meeting with the PML-N, according to a senior PPP leader, was Sindh’s water share, which the PPP thought may be decreased since the federal government planned to cut six canals from the Indus River to irrigate Cholistan.

The PPP leader said that every political and nationalist party in Sindh was protesting the federal government’s intention to build more canals. According to the Dawn story, the PPP felt that in order to include all interested parties, the federal government had to have brought up the planned Cholistan canals with the Council of Common Interests (CCI). In light of the fact that the CCI has not met in the last 180 days, the PPP urged the government to arrange a meeting as soon as possible.

According to Dawn, which cited a PPP source, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari expressed dissatisfaction with the governing PML-N for failing to include his party in the decision-making process and even withdrew his name from the judicial body created under the 26th Amendment. The government’s decision to break its pledges by failing to provide equal representation for the PPP and PML-N on the judicial panel was criticized by Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.