PTI leader Ali Muhammad Khan has hinted at his party chief Imran Khan’s participation in negotiations as PPP and JI make effort to break the ice between the government and the opposition.

“I think when there will be an initial start to the talks, so there will be a possibility of Imran Khan himself joining it,” he said at Asma Shirazi show Faisla Aap Ka on Tuesday. “Everyone should sit and Imran Khan will also be part of it [talks].”

He was responding to a query over Khan’s insistence on not sitting with politicians at a table. The PTI formed a three-member committee for talks on the political crisis after Jamaat-e-Islami emir Sirajul Haq led a delegation to meet him to discuss the prevailing situation and its solution.

Siraj also met with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other PML-N leaders with the ongoing political crisis on the agenda. The Yousaf Raza Gillani-led delegation met with PML-N and ANP leaders on Monday. Gillani, the former premier, said that they would contact other parties after a consensus among allies on dialogue.

The government and opposition tussle over the date of the elections worsened after the matter reached the Supreme Court. The ruling alliance’s concern over the suo-motu on the election delay in Punjab and KP and the following development to clip CJP’s powers has led to a stand-off between Parliament and the top court.

Many experts have stressed the need for having a dialogue to resolve the crisis, warning that there would be an “emergency situation” if it persists.

PTI’s Ali went on to add that the JI chief decided to be a go-between the government and the opposition after taking all stakeholders on board. “This time, it was good that political forces are on course to have a solution [to the crisis] unlike the 2014 sit-in when the then PM Nawaz Sharif asked former army chief Raheel Sharif to talk to Khan.”

Ali, the former parliamentary affairs minister, welcomed the initiative to have talks on the election date. “There is one thing that we are political people and we have to solve the issues,” he said and warned that it would impact the “hopes of people” if the Supreme Court withers down because of any reason in this political fight.

But analyst Mosharraf Zaidi, who was also a guest on the show, was of the view that the SC’s stature depended on the resolution of public issues. “The people’s hopes [with the SC] are not associated with these big questions: Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif, army, and Constitution. People’s hopes are with actual justice.”

When asked about disagreement among political parties on sitting together and the government’s overture to the opposition, PML-N’s Javed Latif asked whether they were empowered.

To this, Shirazi asked then who. Latif replied who have been in a veiling reference to the establishment, who the PML-N accused of bringing the PTI into power in 2018.

PTI’s Ali prodded Latif with a comment with “leave”.

“You say this very easily. After ruling for four years, you say that I was not empowered and then talk to them at night for an extension. The contradiction in your comment cannot be like this,” Latif said.

The PML-N leader was apparently speaking about PTI Chairman Imran Khan’s comments last year. “Our hands were tied. We were blackmailed from everywhere. Power wasn’t with us. Everyone knows where the power lies in Pakistan so we had to rely on them. We relied on them all the time. They did a lot of good things too but they didn’t do many things that should’ve been done. They have the power because they control institutions such as NAB, which wasn’t in our control,” Khan told reporters in Lahore on October 13, 2022.

But, the PTI leader reiterated that why the government was in power if they were not empowered.

PML-N’s Latif alleged that people in different institutions helped the PTI for many months over the past year and they blackmailed the incumbent government to accept the Khan-led party’s demands. “Are you not being helped today? You [PTI] still ladla that you get bail extension without appearing in court. Did not you attack court,” Latif asked Ali.

Analyst Zaidi called for the non-interference of non-political people in the country’s matters, highlighting that the situation won’t get better if it remains the same.