Staff Reporter
Islamabad
PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Thursday hinted at the possibility of a dialogue between her party and the army from the platform of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). She said however, that for any such talks to happen, they would have to be held in front of the public and not in secret after the “selected government had been sent home.”
In an interview with BBC Urdu, Maryam revealed that members of the security establishment had reached out to “many people around me but nobody has directly contacted me”.
On a question whether she was ready to hold talks with the current army leadership, whom the PML-N supremo and her father, Nawaz Sharif has accused of being behind his “ouster” as prime minister, Maryam said that the “possibility of initiation of dialogue from the PDM’s platform could be thought about but after the selected government had been sent home”.
“The army is our institution. We will definitely talk but within the limits of the Constitution. Talks will be held within the limits prescribed by the Constitution and it will be in front of the public, not in secret.”
Maryam said that she was not “against the institution but if we are to move forward, the selected government will have to go”.
The PML-N vice president said she was ready to talk to “all stakeholders”. However, when asked whether she would talk to the incumbent government of Prime Minister Imran Khan, Maryam said that “the dialogue will be held with the people of Pakistan. It is being held with the people of Pakistan and it is going so well that the forces and the fake government are worried.
“They are so worried they don’t know how to react and they’re making such mistakes in their confusion that the mind is shocked,” she said, adding that the people of the nation were the “real stakeholders”.
In response to another question, Maryam said that the PML-N’s politics was not headed towards a dead-end. Instead, she continued, the ones going towards a dead-end were those who had tried to make this temporary [government].
“Wherever we are going, whether it be Gujranwala, Karachi, Quetta or Gilgit-Baltistan, only one narrative is echoing: vote ko izzat do (honour the vote) and riyasat ke upar riyasat mat banao (do not make a state above the state). She added that the public had seen where this was going, which was not towards a dead-end but towards the supremacy of the Constitution and the law.
