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Published on: 1/8/2009
Last Visited: 2/25/2009
As expected, Sardar Attique has left after accusing the federal government of interfering in the politics of Azad Kashmir, warning it of instability in the region.
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Sardar Attique's Muslim Conference has been in power since July 2001 when the government of the AJKPP was toppled after it was accused of moral impropriety and promoting graft.
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It went to the discredit of Prime Minister Sardar Attique that many people fraudulently received house-building compensation many times over while a large number of the deserving remained deprived.
The recent anti-India surge in Pakistan has served well neither Sardar Attique nor his intellectually conceived policy over the Indian-held Jammu & Kashmir.
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Sardar Attique, who had in recent weeks become an increasingly controversial figure, was known as a supporter of former president Pervez Musharraf.
He had also been accused of corruption.
His ouster came about as a forward bloc within his own Muslim Conference joined hands with opposition parties to deliver an overwhelming vote of no confidence.
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Sardar Attique greeted the new prime minister setting a good tradition of parliamentary behaviour.
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The vote in the 49-seat assembly was denounced by Sardar Attique, who accused the federal government in Islamabad of orchestrating his ouster.
However, the truth is more complex.
The prime minister's downfall began when he alienated a faction of the MC supported by Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, former prime minister and president of AJK.
The complaints of the MC rebels read like a typical political chargesheet: corruption, inefficiency, arbitrary decision-making, sidelining the cabinet, spending too much time away from the capital, etc. Were it not for the rebel group, Sardar Attique's government, which had a comfortable majority in the AJK assembly, would have faced no threat.
Yet it is also apparent that the no-confidence vote succeeded because the PPAJK, which has seven seats, supported it.
In the end, the 25 votes (32 including the PPAJK) mustered by Mr Attique's opponents were numerically enough in the 49-seat assembly, but it was the PPAJK's addition that had a galvanising effect on the opposition.