TRUE to his commitment to the process of reconciliation and dialogue, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, once again, on Wednesday offered an olive branch to the opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) inviting it to sit with the Government to resolve issues. In a widely hailed move, the PM also approached leader of the opposition Omar Ayub Khan and former Speaker Asad Qaisar and shook hands with them as a gesture of goodwill and parliamentary decency. Shehbaz made an impassioned appeal to the opposition to sit together to take the country to progress and prosperity, adding there was no other way forward.
By making yet another offer of dialogue, the Prime Minister has demonstrated his sincerity for the process of national reconciliation which has become a necessity in view of the highly polarized political environment. No doubt, the PTI is facing troubles these days but the PM rightly pointed out that other national leaders experienced similar treatment and conditions in the past and more so during the tenure of the PTI. False cases were framed against political opponents and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was ruthlessly used to victimize them. Some leaders remained incarcerated not for weeks or months but years on cooked up charges and allegations against them could not be proved before the court of law. However, it is also a fact that past mistakes or injustices should not serve as a precedent to continue with the same behaviour and it is time the process of reconciliation is preferred over victimization. For this to happen, a beginning has to be made but unfortunately, the PTI, as before, remains clueless to the possibility of reconciliation. The party proved this once again as leader of the opposition Omar Ayub Khan rejected the offer of the Prime Minister there and then and went to the extent of churning out taunting remarks in response to the statement of the soft-spoken Shehbaz Sharif. In fact, the process of dialogue has become a zero sum game because of the lacklustre attitude of the PTI. It opposed talks with ‘looters’ and ‘thieves’ when it was in power and is doing so while sitting on the opposition benches. At times, it wants dialogue with the Establishment on the plea that the rulers were powerless and then forms committees for dialogue with other parties without any tangible progress towards the cherished goal of serious talks aimed at healing political bitterness. National political landscape is unlikely to witness a change for the better until and unless a commitment is made to resolve differences through discussion and dialogue.
