Pakistan SC offers to assist in settling political crisis

With the political crisis in Pakistan taking a violent turn, the Supreme Court on Monday offered to assist in ending the ongoing impasse between protesters and the Nawaz Sharif government.

The apex court was hearing petitions filed against protesters of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan and fiery cleric Tahirul Qadri.

The judges asked PTI lawyer Ahmad Awais to inform the court whether they accept the court's intervention or not.

Pakistan Awami Tehreek lawyer was not present during the hearing.

The bench asked the counsel to ask the party leadership what proposal they have for the apex court in the ongoing political crisis.

The bench also asked what they wanted to achieve with the protests.

Dawn news reported that the lawyer for PTI was mostly silent. During the hearing, he attempted to tell the bench that his party does not accept the Parliament as a legitimate one as it has been elected through rigging, but the court dismissed his argument.

“We don't want to go into that. Tell us what we should do,” the bench said.

The attorney general argued that the protesting parties had violated a written agreement with the government, which stipulated that the protesters would not enter the Red Zone, refrain from attacking private or public property, avoid bringing infants to the rally and restrict the volume of the sound system to reach only the area where protesters have assembled.

The high-security Red Zone houses important government buildings such as the which houses the supreme court, parliament house, prime ministerial and presidential offices.

In a dramatic escalation of the political crisis, the protesters today stormed the Secretariat and the state-run PTV.

The PTI has been holding a sit-in and protests in Islamabad for the last two weeks demanding that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resign over allegations of rigging in the last general elections in May, 2013 which brought Nawaz Sharif into power for a third time.