Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Sirajul Haq deserves a lot of praise for holding talks with both prime minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan within a span of a few hours with a view to brining both the ‘warring’ sides closer to holding talks on the issue of elections.
The JI chief ought to have launched his “consensus offensive” much earlier, but better late than never. That Sirajul Haq reported “positive response” from both the sides is a highly positive development. The announcement of a three-member team by the PTI leadership to hold talks with JI lends support to JI chief’s claim.
Former president and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Asif Ali Zardari, too, deserves praise for underscoring the need for all parties to sit together and develop a consensus on a single date for the elections.
Moreover, country’s top lawyers at a conference that they organised a couple of days ago in the wake of growing polarization among country’s institutions have advocated the need for a dialogue in order to break the current deadly politico-economic impasse as early as possible.
We all know that any complacency or lack of action in this regard is fraught with grave dangers for the country and its people.
The key is to step back and look at the larger picture. How one can describe a “larger picture”? In my view, a larger picture comprises, among other things, the challenges of growing political instability and polarization among institutions, woeful state of economy, and an alarming uptick in incidents of terrorism.
There is, therefore, the need for stepping back and analyzing the situation in the larger interest of this nation without any further loss of time as the brinkmanship has already pushed the country dangerously to economic calamity.
Syeda Jahan Aara (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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