LAHORE: Separate negotiating committees have been constituted by Jamaat-e-Islami and the government, with the party’s committee due to meet on 7 September — though JI has announced that its sit-ins will continue alongside the talks.
According to JI leader Liaqat Baloch, the party’s negotiating team comprises Inayatullah Khan, Farasat Ali Shah, Ziauddin Ansari, Nasrullah Randhawa and Naveed Ali Baig.
Baloch said sit-ins, protests and public meetings will continue across the country.
The meeting of the negotiating committees is scheduled for 7 September.
The party’s protest sit-in has entered its 20th day. Traffic on Mall Road remains suspended between Faisal Chowk and Regal Chowk as a result.
The closure has caused difficulties for residents and traders. Mall Road is one of Lahore’s principal arteries, carrying traffic past the Punjab Assembly, the civil secretariat, the high court and the central commercial stretch around Regal — which is why a sustained occupation there imposes costs well beyond the protest site itself.
The movement is directed against the petroleum levy and inflation. Sit-ins are continuing at more than 15 locations nationwide, including Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Chitral.
JI Ameer Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman said the sit-ins will continue until the talks with the government committee succeed and the party’s demands are accepted.
“Talks with the government delegation are one thing, but the sit-ins will not end until rights are secured,” he said.
The party held a public meeting in Mingora, Swat, with Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman addressing the gathering. Preparations for the meeting were completed in advance, with the venue decorated in the party’s green and white flags.
The structural feature of this dispute is JI’s decision to negotiate and protest simultaneously.
That is a deliberate posture. A party that suspends its protest to enter talks surrenders its principal source of pressure and depends on the government’s good faith for the outcome. A party that maintains the protest keeps the cost of non-agreement live throughout the negotiation. The trade-off is that the government enters talks under duress, which can harden rather than soften its position.
Both committees now exist, which is itself a shift — the government’s willingness to constitute a formal negotiating body indicates the sit-ins have registered.
The petroleum levy is a per-litre charge applied to fuel that has become a significant revenue instrument for the federal government, and one it has committed to under fiscal consolidation programmes. Because it is levied at a fixed rate rather than as a proportion of price, its burden is felt most acutely by lower-income consumers, and it feeds through into transport and food costs.
That transmission is visible in the same week’s data: the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics recorded weekly inflation up 0.65 per cent, with petrol up 0.90 per cent and the bureau linking that rise to increases in wheat flour, chicken and mash dal.
The 7 September meeting is the immediate marker. The second is whether the Mall Road closure holds through it — JI has said it will, and the traders affected are an increasingly vocal constituency.
The Lahore Times has approached the government’s negotiating committee for comment on its position ahead of the 7 September meeting.
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