— Fawad says final agenda to be discussed in final round on Tuesday
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) said its leadership rejected the attempts to sabotage the talks and decided to continue the negotiations with the government on the framework of the elections within the ambit of the Constitution.
Fawad Chaudhry, senior vice president of the party, in a statement, said that keeping in mind the orders of the Supreme Court, the opposition party decided to continue the talks with the government and the final agenda would be discussed in the next round of talks scheduled for Tuesday.
Lashing out at the imported government, he strongly condemned the raid on party president Parvez Elahi’s house and the continued detention of colleague Ali Amin Gandapur despite being granted bail.
He said the arrests of workers were making the negotiation process meaningless if the government negotiation team cannot play any role in maintaining the atmosphere after the assurance, how will they make big decisions?
Meanwhile, Fawad expressed serious reservations over the highly controversial and full-of faults-census results, which would result in reducing seven national assembly seats of Punjab and one of Karachi.
He said that the results of the new census were devastating because the whole process was highly controversial and unbelievable.
Fawad Chaudhry said that the process was full of mistakes adopted only to stop the elections, as a result of which the country would suffer immensely.
THE DIALOGUE
Hours before the raid, efforts to find common ground through dialogue between the leaders of the ruling alliance and the PTI continued as the talks remained on track, and the leaders on both sides had, so far, refused to let their differences come in the way of forging a consensus on general elections.
On the second day of talks, the government and the PTI teams once again entered a room in the Parliament House, shut the door and emerged after a couple of hours, agreeing that the third – possibly final – round would take place on coming Tuesday after which a decision would be announced.
Though the leaders emerged sounding hopeful about the future prospects, the second round of talks between the PTI and the ruling coalition to break the ongoing political and constitutional impasse in the country ended with both sides agreeing to take input from their leadership and continue negotiations next week.
