ISLAMABAD: PPP Secretary-General Raja Pervez Ashraf on Saturday indirectly suggested that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif could go for mid-term elections to end the prevailing political impasse in the country.

“Had I been the prime minister, in the present situation I would have called mid-term elections,” Mr Ashraf said, stressing that he was neither raising a demand nor making a suggestion to the prime minister to do so.

Speaking at a news conference, the former prime minister said the government should contact PTI Chairman Imran Khan and PAT chief Dr Tahirul Qadri and convince them to open serious talks.

He said the protest sit-ins had paralysed the federal capital and badly affected the functioning of the government for more than a month. He said no foreigner was investing in Pakistan and the people of Rawalpindi and Islamabad had been besieged.

Mr Ashraf was of the view that mid-term elections were held in all democracies and the country’s constitution too had provisions for the prime minister’s resignation as well as mid-term polls.

He, however, said the prime minister’s resignation could not be obtained through coercion. He made it clear that he was not making a demand that the prime minister should resign.

The PPP leader said there was no harm in holding elections even for 50 seats, if required.

Mr Ashraf, who lost the election for his native Gujjar Khan constituency, alleged that the 2013 general elections were massively rigged and the PPP was the main victim of it in Punjab.

He said that if the elections were fair and transparent, no one should object to recounting of votes.

The issue of rigging, he said, was first raised by PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari. He alleged that PPP was made to lose at least 50 seats in Punjab through rigging, but the party remained silent for the sake of democracy.

Reiterating his party’s stance, he said the PPP was not supporting any personality or government in the present crisis, but it wanted supremacy of democracy and the parliament.

He admitted that the party leadership was under pressure from its workers over its policy of extending all-out support to the government in the present crisis.

Had the elections been fair, no one would have dared to demand the prime minister’s resignation through a gathering of only 10,000 people, he said.

The former premier said party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari would address a big public meeting in Karachi on October 18 and people from all over the country would participate in it. He said the PPP was not against or in favour of any political party and it had great respect for all the parties.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2014