ISLAMABAD: A showdown between the coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and ousted premier Imran Khan and his allies continued this week, heightening political uncertainty as the South Asian nation struggles to stave off financial default.
On Tuesday, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the foreign minister and a coalition partner of PM Sharif, invited Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to rejoin parliament instead of agitating against the government.
Khan, who was ousted from power in April following a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, has refused to accept the Sharif-led government and been holding protest rallies across the country since to demand early elections.
Khan has asked parliamentary members of the PTI party and its allies to dissolve the legislative assemblies of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to force the government into holding snap polls. In April, Khan also announced en masse resignations of his party’s lawmakers but the resignations were not accepted since PTI members did not appear before the assembly speaker to certify they had willingly decided to leave their seats. The PTI parliamentarians who resigned from the National Assembly in April have now asked to set up a meeting with the speaker of the assembly to get their resignations verified and continue their agitation against the government.
Against this background, Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday issued a “last warning” to Khan and asked him to return to parliament so that he could become part of electoral and accountability reforms.
“It’s a good thing that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari asked Imran Khan to return to the parliament,” Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said in a late night TV interview. “Khan’s desire to resign [from the national assembly] is not being followed by his party, as most parliamentarians of the PTI are asking the speaker not to summon them to approve the resignations.”
In response to Asif and Bhutto Zardari’s comments, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, a senior leader of the PTI, said the PTI was willing to return to the parliament but the government did not seem “serious.”
“The government is not serious about [PTI’s return] to the parliament as they are not announcing a date for the election,” he told reporters.
