LAHORE: The Pakistan People’s Party has advised Prime Minister Imran Khan to focus on proving his government’s majority in the National Assembly instead of giving calls to workers for a public meeting outside the parliament.

It has also rejected the dialogue offer being made by the government to the opposition.

“Someone should make Khan Saheb realize that he needs to show [the support of] 172 members [MNAs] in the National Assembly. Inviting one million people to D-Chowk [in Islamabad] is an irrelevant activity,” for PPP’s former prime minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said in a statement here on Sunday. He said Imran Khan didn’t enjoy the confidence of the members of his own party (Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf) and his protection lied only in establishing his majority in the house.

“Polluting the atmosphere outside the house is neither a solution to the issue nor will it settle the [no-confidence] affairs.”

He believed that even a handful of PTI workers would not respond to the PM’s call for assembling outside the parliament what to talk of collecting one million people there.

He said statements of government allies and their meetings with the opposition were a harbinger for a dark future of Imran Khan and cautioned that the prime minister’s use of abusive language against his political rivals would become a problem for him.

Punjab PPP general secretary Syed Hassan Murtaza said the government offered talks only after seeing the power slipping out of its hands.

Referring to the talks offer made by Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid in a press conference earlier in the day, he said the talks were held with the politicians and not with the ‘touts’.

Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2022