LAHORE: Jamaat-i-Islami emir Sirajul Haq has said the involvement of the armed forces in political affairs is not good and it has not added to the prestige of the country in the eyes of the world.

In a statement here on Friday, he said the primary task of the armed forces was to defend national borders whereas the political issues should be resolved by the politicians themselves.

He said the JI had made earnest efforts during the last three weeks for rapprochement between the government and the protesting parties so that the crisis could be solved without delay.

The participants in the sit-ins in Islamabad, he said, endured hardships during the last three weeks but he and his team also had had sleepless nights while making hectic efforts for a peaceful solution to the crisis.

He hoped that the dust would settle soon and the crisis would be over.

JI Secretary-General Liaquat Baloch said it would be in the interest of the nation that the political crisis was solved peacefully and there was no bloodshed in the federal capital. He said both sides should show flexibility and the Constitution, democratic system and rights of the masses must be protected.

Baloch said the decision of the leadership of the Inqilab and Azadi marches to turn to the army chief on a phone call was surprising for the general public.

PTI: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf spokesperson Shireen Mazari says the ISPR clarification proved that the government dragged the armed forces into the current political crisis.

She said the government had approached the armed forces to seek their help in putting an end to the deadlock in talks and exposed the Sharifs’ lack of trust in the political leadership of the country.

She said Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar was attempting to confuse the masses through jugglery of words and demanded that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resign at once for telling a lie on the floor of the house about the army chief’s role in resolving the political dispute.

PPP: Pakistan People’s Party Information Secretary Qamar Zaman Kaira says as his party is yet to hold internal consultations to frame its formal policy on the issue, he cannot comment on it immediately.

However, he lamented that the government and the ISPR were communicating with each other through the media creating a strange situation. The media knew better where such a situation would lead to, he said.

He indirectly blamed Chaudhry Nisar for trying to playing with words by arguing that “the perspective cannot change with the change in words.”

Mr Kaira, who is also former federal information minister, said the word ‘facilitator’ meant that the parties to a dispute did not have a place to sit together or lacked relevant facilities required for dialogue.

But in the case of the ongoing Islamabad protest, both the opposition PTI and PAT had held multiple but unsuccessful rounds of talks with the government at different venues, he said.

What they lacked for making the parleys succeed was a guarantor to ensure that both the parties would abide by the agreement to be signed as a result of the talks, he added.

Asked what advice he would like to give the government, he said: “The earlier it would confess its sin the better.”

AWP: Awami Workers Party chief Abid Hasan Manto supported the PPP stance that the selection of words could not change the reality that the government had asked the armed forces to intervene in a political matter whether as a guarantor, arbitrator or, in the words of Chaudhry Nisar, facilitator.

He said invitation to the army for playing a role in a political dispute was unprecedented in democratic culture and that too at a point when political forces from all the four provinces were supporting the government.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2014