Pakistan's military has stepped in to intervene in the ongoing political crisis gripping the country, to play the role of mediator between the government and opposition figures calling for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s resignation.
The leader of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Imran Khan, and Canada-based anti-government cleric, Tahir-ul-Qadri, have been holding separate rallies and sit-ins attended by thousands of demonstrators in Islamabad since August 14. They are calling for Sharif to resign over alleged voter fraud and government inefficiency.
The two men separately met with Pakistan's army chief General Raheel Sharif (no relation to Nawaz) late on Thursday night, an army spokesperson confirmed, after earlier talks with the government fell through.
The country’s interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said discussions with government negotiators resumed yesterday.
The prime minister met with General Sharif earlier on Thursday, the latest in a series of meetings between the two.
Khan and Qadri earlier told supporters they had accepted the army's role as "guarantor" and "mediator" in the crisis.
'Voter fraud'
Pakistan's military, which has ruled the country for nearly half of its 67 years of independence, frequently intervenes in politics and has carried out repeated coups against elected governments.
The army last took over the country in 1999, when then-army chief Pervez Musharraf deposed PM Sharif and ruled the country for nine years.
Khan has accused Sharif's PML-N of widespread voter fraud during the country’s 2013 general elections, in which the PML-N won 189 out of a possible 342 seats.
The then-incumbent Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won 46 seats, while Khan's own party, the PTI, took 34 seats.
Qadri has called for the elected government to be dismissed and replaced by an appointed government of technocrats, who would then rewrite the constitution. The cleric and his supporters reject the country's current system of governance.
PM must resign
Khan has said he would accept a judicial commission to investigate his allegations of vote rigging, but would not accept the commission’s findings as long as Sharif remained in office.
"As long as Nawaz Sharif is the prime minister, there will not be an independent or impartial investigation," he told supporters shortly after his meeting with the army chief.
Asad Umar, a PTI negotiator, told Al Jazeera that his party had accepted the army's role in the crisis "because the government is simply unable to come to a political solution.”
"Whatever decision is taken, however, it will have to be within the bounds of the constitution," he said.
PM Sharif defiant
PM Sharif struck a defiant figure speaking on the floor of the national assembly yesterday, as he refused to step down and asserted his party's constitutional mandate to rule.
"I have taken an oath under the constitution, it is my view that... it is my responsibility and obligation to uphold every letter of that resolution," he said, referring to an August 21 resolution passed by the National Assembly that rejected the "unconstitutional" demands of Khan and Qadri.
The government ordered police in Lahore to register a murder case against PM Sharif and 20 others on Thursday, in a case relating to the killing of 11 Qadri supporters by police on June 17.
Qadri rejected the move, even though the registration of the case had been a key demand of his Pakistan Awami Tehreek, saying the case did not contain a full list of suspects and failed to charge them under anti-terrorism laws, as he had demanded.
