Gohar Ali Khan, President of PTI. PHOTO: EXPRESS
RAWALPINDI:
PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan said that if the talks were reduced to the level of a “meeting of five elders”, then such talks should be categorically rejected.
“Such a meeting is also not necessary and these five elders cannot even meet,” Gohar said on Tuesday outside Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, where PTI founder Imran Khan is being held.
Gohar was responding to a statement by Prime Minister’s advisor Rana Sanaullah.
Speaking to a private news channel on January 1, Sanaullah said “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 was quoted as saying.
Days after an opposition alliance – TTAP – released its charter of demands while also announcing “wheel locks and shutdowns” on the second anniversary of the “highly rigged” February 8 elections, the Prime Minister on December 23 offered an olive branch to the PTI.
The PTI, however, said it could not enter the negotiations “from a position of weakness” as it continued to prepare for a street movement.
Speaking with reference to his statement last Tuesday, Gohar clarified that his statement on “begging for meetings” had been distorted.
Speaking to reporters outside Adiala Prison on December 30, Gohar reportedly said that not only outsiders but also “insiders” were complicit in forcing them to “beg” authorities to meet the PTI founder.
“No matter how intense the street movement, there is no alternative to dialogue,” he had said, adding that Imran had not given any instructions to end the negotiations.
Gohar clarified that what he meant was that if, despite court orders, SOPs and jail rules, they are not allowed to meet Imran Khan, it effectively amounts to begging.
“If meetings are not allowed, any form of negotiation loses its meaning. Making meetings controversial will not move things forward,” he said. He warned that both sides would have to pay a heavy price to normalize the situation.
Gohar said they visit him every Tuesday and return without a meeting, and that for over a month no one has been allowed to meet the party founder.
He said efforts by the PTI to improve the situation were met with equal efforts by the other side to make it worse. He said the greatest strength of the PTI founder and his party lay in its workers, who endured all kinds of hardships imposed by the state.
He announced that a strike of locks and wheel locks would be observed across the country on February 8 and the party would hold large-scale protests on that day. He said that to normalize the situation, meetings with the sisters and lawyers were essential.
Meanwhile, PTI General Secretary Salman Akram Raja said that PTI has no other president other than Imran Khan. He said there was no benefit in holding negotiations without the PTI founder.
He rejected claims that the party was accountable to Aleema Khan, saying there was no truth in such claims. He said their first and last demand was a meeting with the party’s founder.
