ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has managed to persuade the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) and Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) to stay part of the government,while hoping to convince the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) in the next couple of days.
Sources close to the negotiation process told Pakistan Today that the meetings with the PML-Q and BNP-M have paid off and that these parties had committed to continue supporting the ruling party in return for the acceptance of their demands.
About the tough statements made by PML-Q leaders against the ruling party, the sources said that the PTI delegation had taken up the issue with the PML-Q senior leadership.
“PML-Q has assured us that it would ask its leaders to refrain from making such statements in public,” sources said.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan has also directed Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to improve his relations with the allied parties in the province amid increasing trust deficit.
Buzdar called on PM Imran Khan at his office in Islamabad and briefed him about his negotiations with the allied parties, especially the PML-Q.
GOVT TAKES BNP, GDA INTO CONFIDENCE:
The government’s dialogue committee, comprising Jahangir Tareen, Pervez Khattak, Farogh Naseem and Azam Swati, met a BNP-M delegation and assured the party that its demands would be met.
The dialogue committee assured maximum coordination by the PTI-led government to BNP-M, including the resolution of issues regarding the missing persons and miseries of Balochistan people.
Earlier in the day, a government team led by Jahangir Tareen held a meeting with a Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) delegation to discuss reservations and demands of its coalition partner in Sindh.
GDA leader Fehmida Mirza expressed grievances and complained that the federal government was not providing funds for the development in its constituencies, leaving the allies in a tough spot. The alliance was not being taken into confidence over decisions related to Sindh, the political base of GDA, she complained.
The government team assured that the GDA grievances would be addressed and that the party would be a part of future decisions.
“All allies are respectable to the government and their reservations will be addressed,” Jahangir Tareen said in the meeting. He also assured that the development funds to the coalition partners would be issued soon.
MQM-P NOT SO HAPPY:
Meanwhile, the MQM-P continued to ramp up pressure on the government, as the resignation letter written to Prime Minister Imran Khan by its chief, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, was mysteriously leaked to the media and no one from the MQM-P wanted to talk about it.
Sources linked this development to the MQM-PTI rift and said issues between the federal government and MQM-P could not be resolved and the Karachi-based party was in no mood to mend fences with the ruling party, at least for now.
“In view of my decision not to continue as Member of the Federal Cabinet, I hereby tender my resignation as Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication w.e.f 12th January 2020. It is requested that my resignation may be accepted accordingly,” the resignation letter stated.
On Jan 12, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui had announced that he was resigning as the federal minister for information technology citing the government’s non-serious attitude towards resolving the issues facing Karachi.
