PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan. PHOTO: EXPRESS
RAWALPINDI:
PTI president Gohar Ali Khan has said that if the talks have been reduced to the level of a “meeting of five elders”, then they should be rejected outright.
“There is also no need for such a meeting nor can those five elders even meet,” Gohar said on Tuesday outside Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where PTI founder Imran Khan is detained.
Gohar was responding to a statement by Prime Minister’s advisor Rana Sanaullah.
While speaking to a private news channel on January 1, Sanaullah said that “confidence-building measures” between five major players in the country would improve the overall political situation.
“Two of them are my leaders, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Nawaz Sharif. The third is President Asif Ali Zardari, the fourth is [incarcerated PTI leader] Imran Khan, and everyone knows who the fifth is,” Sanaullah said.
Days after an opposition alliance, the TTAP, issued its letter of demand and at the same time announced a “traffic jams and closures” protest on the second anniversary of the “highly rigged” elections on February 8, the Prime Minister on December 23 offered an olive branch to the PTI.
The PTI, however, stated that it could not enter into talks “from a position of weakness” as it was still making preparations for a street movement.
Referring to his statement last Tuesday, Gohar clarified that his statement about “begging for meetings” had been distorted.
Speaking to journalists outside Adiala Jail on December 30, Gohar was reported to have said that not only outsiders but also “insiders” were complicit in forcing them to “beg” the authorities for a meeting with the PTI founder.
“No matter how intense a street movement is, there is no alternative to dialogue,” he said, adding that Imran was not instructed to stop negotiations.
Gohar clarified that what he meant was that if, despite court orders, standard operating procedures and jail rules, they are not allowed to meet Imran Khan, then it amounts to begging.
“If meetings are not allowed, any type of negotiation loses meaning. Making meetings controversial will not move things forward,” he said. He warned that both sides would have to pay a high price to normalize the situation.
Gohar said they visit him every Tuesday and return without meeting, and for more than a month no one has been allowed to meet the party founder.
He said efforts made by the PTI to improve the situation were met with equal efforts by the other side to make it worse. He said that the greatest strength of the founder of PTI and his party lay in its workers, who have endured all kinds of hardships imposed by the State.
He announced that a nationwide lockdown and traffic jam strike would be held on February 8, and that the party would organize large-scale protests that day. He said that meetings with the sisters and lawyers were essential for the normalization of the situation.
On the other hand, PTI General Secretary Salman Akram Raja said that PTI has no other president than Imran Khan. He said there was no benefit in holding any kind of negotiation without the PTI founder.
He rejected claims that the party was responsible to Aleema Khan, saying there was no truth to such claims. He said his first and last demand was a meeting with the founder of the party.
