KARACHI: While the PTI and the PML-N have been at daggers drawn for the past many months, leaders from the two parties seem to have found common ground over the army’s meddling in politics and the sense of urgency with which this needs to be curtailed.

While speaking to Stephen Sackur on BBC’s HARDtalk programme, senior PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry blamed the army and former chief of army staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa for playing “an active role” in the ouster of the PTI government through a vote of no confidence in April 2022.

In the interview aired on Friday, Mr Chaudhry claimed the loyalties of members of the PTI’s allied parties were bought and they were taken to Sindh House to make the move successful.

Echoing similar sentiments, PML-N leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Saturday blamed the army for meddling in the 2018 elections and linked the country’s current crises to that interference.

“Compare where we are now to 2018. If you want to find out where the rot started, it was the interference in the 2018 elections,” the former prime minister said while speaking to DawnNewsTV’s Nadir Guramani.

Fawad Chaudhry, Khaqan Abbasi link current crisis to ‘unconstitutional’ meddling

“If we don’t respect elections, if we don’t respect people’s choice, the results will be what we are facing right now,” Mr Abbasi said.

When Mr Chaudhry was asked if the PTI had sought any help from the army to avert the no-confidence motion, he rejected the claims, adding that the PTI government “never asked” for any help but demanded the army to stay neutral.

“But the neutrality [on part of the army] was not there and it was helping the present government for a regime change.”

However, Mr Abassi denied the impression of any help from the army to oust Imran Khan as prime minister and said the PTI’s allies switched sides and made the motion successful.

While they criticised the army’s past meddling, the two leaders appeared to take the military’s current claim of ‘being apolitical’ at the face value and added it will take time for the new army leadership to change the perception.

Mr Chaudhry said the current army leadership has just assumed the responsibility and the PTI hoped it would change the policies of the former army chief.

Mr Abbasi added that the army has had an influence over the country’s politics, a huge part of which has been unconstitutional.

The army’s new leadership has just started and to attenuate the army’s influence in politics would be a difficult task and it will take time, Mr Abbassi added.

Mr Abbasi also touched upon the extension granted by the parliament to ex-COAS Gen Bajwa in 2019.

He said that extension should be an “extraordinary” measure but the amendments made to the Army Act by the PTI government — later ratified by the parliament — made it a routine practice.

He blamed Mr Khan for granting the extension three months in advance and then reneging on it when the matter landed in the Supreme Court.

In their wide-ranging interviews, the two leaders also persisted in their recrimination, blaming each other for the country’s current dire straits.

Mr Chaudhry called the government clueless in the face of an economic crisis and said that the PTI’s ouster from power was the point where a stable economy began to nosedive.

Mr Abbasi added that had ex-PM Khan not been ousted in April, Pakistan wouldn’t even have “survived till June” and defaulted due to the latter’s “disastrous policies”.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2023