KARACHI, Jan 1: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Syed Munawwar Hasan has asked his party's workers to get ready for elections as well as for a “revolution” that may take place before the polls, adding that changes taking place in the Middle East are determining the direction of events.

Addressing an impressive public meeting held by the party's Karachi West chapter in Banaras Colony on Sunday, he urged the people to change their voting pattern and said those voted to power in the past couple of elections had failed to deliver and given the masses unemployment, poverty, lawlessness and price hike.

He said that if people like President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and leader of the Muslim League would be elected again and again, the situation would keep deteriorating because they plundered wealth in the country and transferred it to foreign banks.

He held PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif equally responsible for the existing situation because of his support over the past three years to the government. The JI chief alleged that the national interest had been made subservient to the US.

He said only an Islamic revolution could change the fate of people.

He said Pakistan should also start a dialogue with the Taliban after disengaging its troops from the tribal areas.

He appealed to Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to exercise his constitutional powers to get his orders implemented and to expose all those who had 'conspired against the army through the memo scandal'.

He criticised the government and said socialism and communism had failed and now capitalism was heading towards its logical end.

He said the recent Nato attack was not the first but a sequel of aggression against the country. He said the US wanted to make India dominant and downplay the role of China and Iran. He alleged that the US had hatched a plot to destabilise the country, to eliminate its Islamic mindset and occupy its natural resources.

JI secretary general Liaquat Baloch said the military and civil bureaucracy should not interfere in electoral politics so that people could elect their true representatives in free and fair elections.