Daily Times

Stressing the need for fresh elections in the country, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Asad Qaiser said Saturday that the government would have to dissolve the National Assembly if it is sincere and wants to come out of the crisis. Talking to a private news channel, Qaiser said: “The government should dissolve the assemblies if it wants to hold elections across the country on the same.” Putting the onus of creating a conducive environment for negotiation on the Pakistan Democratic Movement-led government, the former NA speaker Asad Qaiser reiterated that his party was ready for dialogue.

Responding to a question, he said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif fears his party – the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) – will suffer defeat in the upcoming elections, hence, he was reluctant to hold elections. He maintained that negotiations on constitutional reforms could be held if assemblies are dissolved. It should be noted that the PTI, on April 6, had extended a dialogue offer to the coalition government to finalise a date for the “national elections”, hours after the National Assembly passed a resolution rejecting the three-member Supreme Court bench’s “minority” verdict on the Punjab elections. The NA resolution made it binding on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his cabinet not to implement the top court’s verdict in a case relating to the delay in holding elections in Punjab.

PTI Chairman Imran Khan – who has been demanding early elections across the country since his ouster in April last year – earlier said that he was ready to wait till October for polls if the PDM government shares a roadmap with him ensuring that everything would be in order. Talking to journalists, PTI Senior Vice President Fawad Chaudhry said that the political situation in the country was not as deteriorating to impose an emergency. “Only way to stop elections in Pakistan is throwing out the Constitution,” he had added. The move will pave the way for martial law in the country, warned the PTI leader. Referring to the NA resolution, Fawad said that the government did not want elections in the country. “The government was not abiding by the Constitution,” he added.