ISLAMABAD: Political tension between the government and former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party intensified on Wednesday after Khan’s aide claimed the ongoing talks between the two sides over holding elections across the country on the same day had “failed.”
The statement from Khan’s party came a day after the government claimed that the two sides, after holding the third round of negotiations with the administration in Islamabad upon the orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan to resolve the political impasse, had agreed to conduct the polls throughout the country simultaneously.
The controversy was triggered when the PTI and its allies dissolved the provincial assemblies of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in January to force the government to call early elections across the country. Pakistan’s constitution says elections must be held within 90 days of the dissolution of an assembly or after it finishes its tenure and ceases to exist.
Historically, Pakistan has held voting for provincial and national assemblies on the same day, making Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government maintain it would only agree to elections being simultaneously held across the country.
“Media [deliberately] distorting PTI position on talks which failed,” Khan’s aide Shireen Mazari wrote in a Twitter post.
She said her party had only agreed to conduct the polls on the same day if all the assemblies across the country were dissolved by May 14.
Mazari added the ruling Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance had refused to agree to that condition.
Barrister Ali Zafar, who was also a part of the PTI delegation negotiating with the government, said there had been “no consensus on the date of dissolution or elections.”
“This means that the date fixed by Supreme Court under the constitution for the Punjab assembly election is 14th May,” he added. “Disobedience will be a violation of Constitution/court orders involving serious consequences.”
Pakistan’s finance minister Ishaq Dar reported “huge progress” in the government-PTI talks on Tuesday, saying both sides were trying to show flexibility and had agreed to hold the polls on the same day.
Former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, who is part of the government’s negotiating team and accompanied the finance minister, informed the two sides had also agreed to accept the results of the upcoming elections whenever they were held.
In Pakistan, rigging allegations and street protests are not uncommon after election outcomes are announced.
Khan held a sit-in protest in Islamabad against the government of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 2014, protesting against alleged rigging in the general elections a year before that.
