- 44% of Pakistanis fully support negotiations, 16% oppose it.
- 19% participants predict failure of ongoing dialogue process.
- 41% of men, 25% women hoped for success in ongoing talks.
ISLAMABAD: As uncertainty looms over the future of the negotiations between the incumbent government and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), a Gallup Pakistan survey has revealed that one out of every three Pakistanis is hopeful about the dialogue process initiated after heightened political tensions, The News reported on Sunday.
As per the survey which included more than 400 people, 44% of Pakistanis fully support the negotiations whereas 16% opposed it. Over 39% refused to comment on the parleys altogether.
The survey comes against the backdrop of the PTI’s refusal to attend the fourth round of talks scheduled on January 28 at 11:45am on its incarcerated founder Imran Khan’s directives.
The talks commenced in late December in an effort to ease political tensions. However, weeks of talks — with three sessions taking place so far and PTI submitting its much-awaited written charter of demands — have made little progress on key matters.
The dialogue process was “called off” by Khan on Thursday due to the government’s failure to form a judicial commission to probe the May 9 riots and the events related to the party’s Islamabad protests in November 2024.
However, the party later backtracked from the announcement with Chairman Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, saying that the negotiations were in fact put on hold by the former prime minister.
The former ruling party’s approach towards the dialogue process has drawn the government’s ire with a spokesperson for the government’s negotiation committee Senator Irfan Siddique saying that the PTI had made a mockery of the parleys.
With Khan a meeting with his party’s negotiation committee ahead of the next round of talks, Prime Minister’s Adviser on Political Affairs Rana Sanaullah has expressed optimism that the coalition government’s response to the PTI’s demands may convince the latter to return to the dialogue table.
With the negotiations facing an ambiguous future, the participants of the Gallup survey were asked about the success of negotiations with 45% of the respondents expressing doubts and saying that they could not comment on it at the time.
However, 33% of Pakistanis seemed hopeful about the success of the negotiations, while 19% predicted the failure of the negotiations.
A detailed analysis of the results of the survey revealed that men were more optimistic than women as 41% of men and 25% of women hoped for success in the negotiations.
On the contrary, the rate of opposition to negotiations was seen as 21% among men and 16% among women, while 55%of the women in the survey expressed doubts about the success of the negotiations, while this rate was 35% among men.
