Despite potential for talks, threat of shutdown in Pakistan looms

Members of the Pakistani opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf are preparing for mass demonstrations against the government despite the possibility of talks with the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi, a PTI official, said on Tuesday that if talks resume between his party and the PML-N by Dec. 6, he would be able to cancel a planned demonstration on Dec. 8 in the city of Faisalabad.

The threat of a shutdown emerged on Sunday, when Imran Khan, chairman of the PTI, called on his supporters to stage a new wave of protests. The announcement was made at a PTI rally in Islamabad, the country’s capital, where Khan said he would lead protests across the country in major cities starting in Lahore, followed by Faisalabad and ending in Karachi before the entire nation would be brought to a halt by Dec. 16. The date was later pushed to Dec. 18.

The government deployed 15,000 security personnel at the rally.

Dubbing his movement Naya Pakistan or New Pakistan, Khan warned Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the mass disruptions if he does not re-open an official investigation into the alleged rigging of the 2013 general election, in which PML-N won a majority of 189 seats in Pakistan’s 342-seat National Assembly. PTI holds 35 seats in the National Assembly and a majority within the local assembly of the northern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in coalition with another party, Jamaat-e-Islami.

Sharif responded on Tuesday, while at a conference in London, that Khan’s intentions “would not only be inappropriate but disastrous.” He criticized PTI for being preoccupied with disruptive politics, and not focusing enough on improving conditions in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. However, Sharif indicated he was willing to have talks with PTI leaders to move forward on the issue.

Khan’s announcement comes months after tens of thousands of supporters of PTI, under Khan’s leadership, staged a sit-in in Islamabad calling for a government inquiry into the alleged election rigging and for Sharif’s resignation. The demonstrations raised the concern among some in the international community over the country’s stability and that of the region.