Supreme Council sans Qazi decides to contest poll from MMA platform

An alliance of six Islamic political parties has apparently broken ahead of next month's parliamentary polls but their leaders insist that they will keep the fragile unity intact.
The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) was formed before general elections in 2002. Four out of six parties met here on Tuesday with MMA vice president Allama Syed Sajid Ali Naqvi in the chair and decided to take part in elections.
The meeting took place in defiance of a decision by the alliance's chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed whose Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), the second largest component, had already announced a boycott.
Insiders said Qazi had to call off a similar meeting scheduled for the same evening after majority of parties refused to participate. The MMA secretary general Maulana Fazlur Rehman told media after the meeting that four parties had decided to contest polls from the MMA platform regardless of what Qazi planned to do.
One of the component parties of Senator Maulana Samiul Haq has already parted ways from the alliance over different reasons. The alliance will use book as electoral symbol.
Fazl's Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), the largest party in the alliance, doesn't favour boycotting polls and already flexing muscles for contests mainly in conservative parts of the country.
The unity helped Islamic parties emerge as mainstream opposition in the centre and secure an independent and a shared government in NWFP and Balochistan provinces respectively in 2002 polls.
The meeting, Fazl said, had given him powers to issue alliance's ticket to potential candidates. Earlier Qazi was empowered for this job. Maulana said a consultative council would send a fresh list of female and minority candidates to the election commission. A similar list already sent by Qazi was no more acceptable to the alliance, he added.
Fazl said the consultative council had also empowered him to head a five-member parliamentary board of the alliance to decide matters related to polls. Asked whether he still believed the MMA was unbroken despite clear differences between himself and Qazi, Maulana said, "MMA will stay intact. It is an ideological alliance and cannot be dissolved over a tiny little point."
Meanwhile, Qazi Hussain also told a private television channel that he would try to keep the unity of the alliance intact at any cost. But experts don't see any way they can do this.