Ministers contacting PDM for dialogue, claims Maryam
Maryam Nawaz and Bilawal Bhutto address a news conference in Lahore on Friday. SCREENGRAB
Some sitting ministers are contacting the opposition parties for holding a dialogue with the government, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz claimed during a media talk along with Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Friday.
Bilawal, who reached the city the other day ahead of the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) anti-government rally on Sunday, visited Maryam to condole the death of her grandmother, who passed away late last month.
Later, the two leaders held a joint news conference outside her family residence in Jati Umra, in an apparent move to quash any impression of division in the PDM camp.
Maryam said the opposition was being urged not to take out long march and do not resign from the assemblies.
“They are requesting us not to take out long march and not to resign,” she said. However, she added that she had conveyed that she was not interested in holding any dialogue.
She said she believed from the start that there should be no dialogue with this “illegitimate government”.
Regarding the government measures to prevent the PDM from holding the Lahore rally, she said the Multan Jalsa might not have been that successful, if the government had not tried to stop it. “It [the government measures] persuaded the people to come out in defiance,” she added.
“Also, this time around, such measures will not work,” she said. She thanked Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for his visit and said that during the meeting, they discussed the next plan of action – Lahore rally and the larger PDM agenda.
On the occasion, Bilawal endorsed Maryam’s stance, saying that Prime Minister Imran Khan was asking for a dialogue but the time for the “dialogue is over”.
He said the people were making the reconciliatory calls out of fear because they knew they could not face the wrath of people.
Expressing his confidence that the PDM’s long march would be successful, he stressed that the opposition would not do anything to jeopardise democracy. “We are all experienced politicians in the PDM,” he said, adding that they would play their cards in a way that “no such situation arise”.
On December 13, there would be a historic rally, Bilawal continued, expressing the hope that the people of Lahore would “give their decision that they are with democracy and not with Imran Khan” and after that “everyone will see this government starts crumbling down”.
When asked if the PPP was reluctant to resign from the Sindh Assembly, he said that they had decided to take the matter to their CEC meeting, where he would be pleading the case for giving the sacrifice of Sindh government and the National Assembly seats to send this illegitimate government home.