PAGD falls apart as Sajad Lone walks out

Srinagar, Jan 19 ( RNA): After many days of speculations, People's Conference led by Sajad Gani Lone has finally on Tuesday pulled out of PAGD allaiance, accusing it of not living up to the spirit of the objectives of the allaiance. The party chairman has however, made it clear that it will continue to adher to the objectives of the alliance.
According to RNA, Sajad lone informed the PAGD president Dr Farooq Abdullah through a letter . Mr. Lone said,
"I am writing to you in reference to the recently held DDC elections and a
spate of statements issued by leaders belonging to our party. The
recurring theme of the statements was the fielding of proxy candidates
by constituent parties against the officially mandated candidates of the
PAGD.
We convened a meeting of our leaders yesterday and deliberated on the
issue in detail. The predominant feeling in the meeting was that the
PAGD sentiment at top was not emulated on the ground. It was felt that
the results of a sincere alliance should have meant that “the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts”. Instead,
“the whole was not greater
than the sum of parts, sadly not even equalto the sum of parts, but much
lesser and equal to just one part of the many parts.” If you remove the
inverted commas, the sad reality that emerges is that in majority of the
places the party fielding the candidate on behalf of PAGD was left to
fend for itself and secured the votes that his party managed. In most
places other parties were silent bystanders or worst compounded the
problem by fielding proxy candidates.
DDC elections per se may not matter institutionally. But these elections
were distinctive by virtue of the timing. Firstly, the context of these DDC
elections was politically very important. It was the first election post
August 5. And secondly it was a combined show of strength of a majority
of the J & K political mainstream. It was less of an election more of an
opportunity to send a strong unanimous political message.
On the face of it, PAGD won these elections unambiguously having won
the maximum number of seats. We can’t hide statistics and apart from
the number of seats that PAGD won, other important statistical variable in the context of August 5 is the number of votes polled against the
PAGD. We believe that the votes polled against the PAGD are majorly the
votes cast by proxies of PAGD constituent parties against official PAGD
candidates. And the net outcome of selectively voting for and against
PAGD is a very poor vote share. This is certainly not the vote share that
people of J and K deserved post August 5.
Out here in Srinagar where we hold our apex body meetings, we look at
the statistics but out there on the ground people look at our actions and
our intentions. They are eye witnesses to our actions. They are the actors
in the political theatre scripted by us. And we think that people don’t
know what we were up to. People know that blinded by political greed
we fielded candidates against each other and the question they are
asking, “if we can’t trust the PAGD leadership on something as basic as
a DDC seat how can we trust them for larger issues.” We might have
inflicted irreversible damage on to ourselves and on to the very people
that we are supposed to represent. Trust between allying partners who
have been rivals all along can be very elusive and extremely fragile.
proxies have made it perpetually elusive.
This alliance needed sacrifice. Every party had to sacrifice on the ground
in terms of giving space to fellow allies. No party is willing to cede space,
no party is willing to sacrifice. We fought against each other in Kashmir
province not against the perpetrators of August 5. And those who
perpetrated August 5 and their minions are now vocally gleeful.
It is difficult for us to stay on and pretend as if nothing has happened.
There has been a breach of trust between partners which we believe is
beyond remedy. The majoritarian view in our party is the we should pull
out of the alliance in an amicable manner rather than waiting for things
to get messier. And I am confirming that we will no longer be a part of
the PAGD alliance.
I would however want to add that we are divorcing from the alliance not
its objectives. We will continue to adhere to the objectives that we set
out when this alliance was made. And the PAGD leadership should be
assured that we will extend support on all issues which fall within the
ambit of stated objectives. We have issued clear instructions to all party
leaders not to issue any statements against PAGD alliance or its leaders.
May I take this opportunity to thank all the members. It has been a
memorable experience. And my special thanks to doctor sahib." reads the letter.