Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Tahirul Qadri at a press conference on Tuesday urged party workers to stage sit-ins across the country on the polling day.
He said that the PAT will not take part in the next elections. “I have decided to carry on my movement against the corrupt electoral system,” said Qadri.
He said that negotiations regarding the caretaker set up were “the first round of rigging in the general elections.” A place on the caretaker provincial cabinet was being sold for Rs70 million, he said.
Such caretaker setups had only existed in four countries, Rwanda, Kosovo, Nepal and Poland, Qadri said. It was a flawed and corrupt system, he added.
None of the demands made at the Islamabad sit-in had been met, he said. “The nomination papers approved by the election commission allow tax defaulters and evaders, loan defaulters and corrupt people to contest elections,” said Qadri.
He said that the Supreme Court’s ruling of June 8, 2012, that allowed for an additional column of ‘vote for none’ on the ballot papers must be implemented in letter and spirit.
The PAT has decided to take practical steps and stage sit-ins to protest the corrupt electoral system, he said.
Qadri said that he did not want to disrupt the polling process so he had asked PAT workers to protest away from polling stations.
He said that the election commission had allowed corrupt elements to contest elections in a plot to split the country. “A heinous conspiracy against Pakistan was hatched in 2010 which will end up destroying the country by 2015,” Qadri said, without elaborating.
“Terrorism, radicalism and extremism will be rise, the next government will be incompetent,” he predicted. “The next government will further weaken the state institutions,” said Qadri.
He said that he would propose a vision for the country under which the prime minister would be elected directly by the people. The PAT would introduce a new system where there would be no room for corrupt politicians at all, he said.
Qadri vowed that his struggle would continue till the “corrupt system” was abolished.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 20th, 2013.