PFUJ Unification Committee convenes one last meeting on July 23rd

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published: 13 July 2016

The PFUJ Unification Committee is set to convene its final meeting on July 23, inviting all former presidents and secretaries. This meeting aims to finalize the unification process started nearly 10 months ago.

Summary

ISLAMABAD - The PFUJ Unification Committee which met here Wednesday with M. Ziauddin (pictured) in chair decided to call one final meeting on July 23 of all the stake-holders comprising all former presidents and secretary generals of the national body including those that served the defunct factions following the 2013 elections - one led by Rana Azeem and the other by Afzal Butt - the 2013 BDM members and the presidents and secretary generals of the 2013 UJs. A statement issued Wednesday said the UC authorized the chairman to personally call these stakeholders and invite them to this final meeting to be held in Islamabad at the PFUJ headquarters at 3pm. Those willing to participate in this meeting can contact the UC chairman on his cell phone and/or at his email address (Cell: 0308-2221665; email address: m_ziauddin@hotmail.com). The UC chairman does not have the telephone numbers or the email addresses of all the invitees. The UC has finalized a number of alternate proposals on how best to go about completing the final stages of the unification process started almost 10 months ago and seek a consensus of the stakeholders at the final meeting on one of these proposals. There were a number of reasons for the inordinate delay in reaching these final stages of the unification process. The first of these was winning the confidence of the majority of the community; second, to get the various factions to agree to a written down settlement agreement; third, the amount of time the UC members could spare from their own professional engagements and; finally the time-consuming task of warding off the shenanigans of the vested forces that thrived on continued factionalism in the PFUJ — these forces include the establishment, the government, a couple of political parties and four major media houses. It seems, all want to have their own respective pocket PFUJ. The UC has been encouraged by the feedback on the Investigation Report made public before Ramazan. Even those that had doubted UC’s sincerity and its motives have been persuaded to change their opinion from negative to positive. The consensus of the majority of the journalist community is that the elections held in Murree on May 15 were unconstitutional, illegal and immoral as a faction led by those that had signed the settlement agreement violated its moral obligations by participating in that election. More importantly, since no UJ exists at the venue of those elections, it was, indeed, a blatant violation of the PFUJ constitution to hold the elections in Murree which automatically renders them illegal. So, for all intents and purposes the UC is the only legal body that represents PFUJ at this juncture by virtue of the wishes expressed by the signatories in the settlement agreement.

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KEY POINTS:

• Final meeting scheduled for July 23 at PFUJ headquarters.
• Invitations sent to former presidents and secretaries of the national body.
• Committee focused on unifying factions within PFUJ.
• Significant delays attributed to gaining community trust and agreement.
• Elections held in May deemed unconstitutional by journalist community.