PML-N Senator Irfan Siddiqui has indicated that his party would no longer “repeatedly call out” to the PTI for talks, while reiterating that the latter needed to approach it with seriousness.
Relations between the PTI and the PML-N-led coalition government — already tense since party founder Imran Khan’s ouster in 2022 — have grown even more strained over time.
While the PML-N has repeatedly offered a dialogue to the PTI, Imran has cited certain conditions, including the return of its “stolen mandate”, and has instead preferred holding talks with the military establishment.
The senator stressed that holding a dialogue depended on when the PTI would have realised that “we shouldn’t have talks with the army but with politicians”.
He added that perhaps Mahmood Khan Achakzai, chief of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and leader of the opposition alliance, would be “successful in making [the PTI] understand” that a dialogue among political parties was needed.
“The point is that a party does not want to hold talks with you, and this is that party which was clearly seen behind the May 9 [incidents],” Senator Siddiqui said, referring to the violent protests last year following Imran’s arrest.
Speaking about the government’s decision to seek a ban on the PTI, Senator Siddiqui asserted that the PTI’s role “cannot be the role of a patriotic [political] party”.
“This party’s role cannot be called pro-Pakistani in any manner,” the PML-N lawmaker said.
Siddiqui went on to list the PTI’s letter to the International Monetary Fund and protests it has organised outside the Fund’s office, the May 9 riots as well as multiple resolutions passed in the US Congress.
