LAHORE: Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced on Sunday making public terms of reference framed by both the government and the opposition on the Panama leaks probe if talks between the two sides failed to reach any conclusion.

“The respective ToRs of the government and the opposition will be published if dialogue with the opposition does not produce a joint stance,” he told media after presiding over a meeting of the Data Darbar management committee here on Sunday.

Multiple rounds of talks between the two sides on ToRs failed as the opposition insisted on first holding the prime minister accountable while the government refused to make the Panama leaks investigation the PM-specific.

Defending the government stance, Mr Dar claimed that the ToR framed by the government in consultation with its allies are comprehensive and wide-ranging.

He said that judicial inquiries over the last 60 years had been conducted under a certain law (which proved unsatisfactory) and a new law had been enacted to make the inquiry process more effective and comprehensive.

He told a questioner that they would try their best to convince the opposition on the ToRs issue.

In reply to a question about threats of sit-ins and strikes if the government did not accommodate the opposition’s point of view in the ToR, the minister said that politics of agitation was not in the national interest and said that the 2014 sit-in by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan Awami Tehreek had caused $1 billion financial loss to the country besides one-year delay in the commencing of work on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

In reply to a question about the likely strategy of the government if the PTI resorted to a protest movement in case of failure of talks on the ToR issue, Mr Dar said that allies would be consulted before devising a strategy in this respect.

About the appointment of Election Commission members, he said that July 25 was the deadline to finalise the names.

He said he had contacted the Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly, Khursheed Shah, on the subject and expressed the hope that the issue would be resolved before the deadline.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2016