By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz-led coalition government and the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are due to hold talks on Friday, three days before the party of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan plans to march on Islamabad.
PTI chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan said on Thursday that his party had accepted the government’s offer of negotiations. Representatives of both sides would meet at noon in the office of the National Assembly speaker, he said. The decision, he added, followed a meeting of opposition leaders at Parliament House earlier in the day.
The offer of dialogue follows days of sharpening rhetoric over the 4 October march. PTI says the protest is aimed at securing the release of its founder and what it calls the restoration of constitutional supremacy. The party had already postponed the march once, from 27 September.
The prospect of talks is complicated by the opposition’s own position. Mehmood Khan Achakzai, the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, did not rule out meeting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, but said he would not do so at the Prime Minister’s House, the Prime Minister’s Office or the speaker’s chamber.
“I am ready to sit anywhere in Pakistan, under any tree. I am ready to visit the house of any party [leader]. But I will not go to the speaker house [sic], the Prime Minister’s House or the prime minister’s chamber,” he told reporters at Parliament House.
Achakzai, who heads the opposition alliance Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz Ayeen-e-Pakistan (TTAP), which includes PTI, described the prime minister as illegitimate and said the mandate of millions of Pakistanis had been taken from them. “Harsh words are rising to my lips; that is why I am silent,” he said.
He was responding to a question about an invitation from Rana Sanaullah, the prime minister’s adviser on political affairs, for him and Gohar to sit down with the premier. In a video clip shared by the TTAP, Achakzai said any meeting with Mr Sharif would follow a meeting with Khan, who is in jail. It was not immediately clear whether he would attend Friday’s session in the speaker’s office.
The prime minister had previously invited Achakzai to consultations on national issues and on matters related to PTI before leaving for the United States. He had also invited him on 11 September for mandatory consultation on appointing a new chief election commissioner.
Government and PTI “off the record”
Sanaullah said earlier on Thursday that the government and PTI were already engaged in “off-the-record talks” over the march. Speaking on a local television channel, he said the decision rested with PTI’s senior leadership, “with whom off-the-record consultation is ongoing”.
He was equally blunt about the alternative. “Even if they do not postpone it, we have arrangements in place to stop them,” Sanaullah said, adding that the law would be enforced “in full force” and that marchers would be barred from entering Islamabad.
He likened the march to a “provincial government attacking the capital”, a reference to the PTI-led administration in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). That, he said, could not be tolerated under any circumstances.
Asked about governor’s rule in KP, Sanaullah said the option was “on the table”. He said the government was consulting coalition parties and that any such step would take effect only with parliamentary approval. He accused the province’s chief minister of doing nothing on development, counter-terrorism or public welfare for two months, saying all he had done was talk of marching on Islamabad and toppling the federal government. “They want to take ladders to Islamabad to secure the release of a certain someone,” he said.
Sanaullah also said people operating from social media were dictating PTI’s course. He said Nawaz Sharif, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, continued to advise the party and that his approval was sought on major matters.
Despite the warnings, the federal government has reportedly decided not to impose emergency or governor’s rule in the province for now, according to informed sources, and to give PTI another chance to reconsider the march. The sources said that if PTI cancelled the march, several matters could later be addressed through political and administrative channels.
Opposition demands talks “without conditions”
Allama Raja Nasir Abbas, the Senate opposition leader, said his side was ready for dialogue but that it must come without preconditions. “Negotiations cannot take place with the sword of a condition hanging over them,” he said, and he warned against anyone holding “a dagger of conditions” to the opposition’s neck.
Speaking after the opposition meeting, he said the protest from KP would be peaceful even if met with violence. “When we leave from there, there will be no weapons in our hands,” he said. “We will carry the Quran in our pockets.”
He accused the government of behaving like “scared people” by placing containers to seal Islamabad, digging up roads and hammering nails into routes before any protest had begun. Peaceful protests, sit-ins and long marches were part of democratic politics, he said, and the government should have guaranteed protesters’ safety and designated routes. He also called arrests under the Maintenance of Public Order law “completely illegal”.
The meeting of opposition leaders, held in the Senate opposition leader’s chamber, was also attended by Gohar, PTI secretary general Salman Akram Raja, former senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, former National Assembly speaker Asad Qaiser, National Assembly chief whip Aamer Mahmood Kamboh and TTAP spokesman Akhundzada Hussain Ahmad Yusufzai.
Gohar said imposing governor’s rule would worsen the situation, raise tensions and deepen divisions. “I tell everyone, for God’s sake, come to their senses and avoid such measures,” he said. He said the focus in KP should be on preventing terrorism, which PTI had always maintained should not be politicised. He insisted the announcement of the march was final and that it would continue until the party’s demands were met.
KP Chief Minister Sohail Afridi said on Tuesday that the march would go ahead on 4 October regardless of speculation about governor’s rule or an emergency. He said supporters would first gather in Swabi before moving on, and that the party would march towards Islamabad under any circumstances. “We will remain peaceful,” he said.
KP Governor Faisal Karim Kundi said last week that consultations on governor’s rule had taken place and that the Constitution provided for it.
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