ISLAMABAD: On the 50th day of his party’s sit-in in the city, PAT chief Dr Tahirul Qadri announced on Thursday that “we will contest the next elections to bring revolution” in the country.
“Would you like to see the PAT as a revolutionary political party? Do you think we should participate in the next elections,” Qadri asked his supporters at the sit-in in his routine daily address to them.
“Yes” roared the supporters who had been camping outside the Parliament House for that very revolution for seven weeks.
Know more: PAT to continue sit-in through Eid holidays
“We will change the system after winning the elections. We cannot compromise with the prevailing system,” Dr. Qadri said. “We will participate in national, provincial and local government elections whenever held, tomorrow or after three months.”
“I invite everyone who wants to contest elections as PAT candidate,” he said, predicting that PAT will emerge as “the largest political party in the country in the near future”.
“We will reestablish the sanctity of the Parliament,” he said.
Also read: Tahirul Qadri, PML-Q leaders meet in London today in bid to form anti-govt alliance
“Anyone who thinks that we will limit ourselves just to bringing revolution, and will leave the elections for others, is deluded,” he added.
“My first target is the heart of Punjab - Faislabad. On October 12, I will hold my first jalsa in Dhobi Ghat, Faislabad and on October 19 we will reach to Minar-i-Pakistan in Lahore. We will take the message of revolution to everyone,” he said.
A little distance away, PTI chief Imran Khan told his supporters that he would present the proofs of the rigging in the 2013 general elections before an independent and impartial commission.
“I used all the ways open to get justice (regarding the rigging), but to no avail,” he said.
“It is our right to raise slogan of ‘Go Nawaz Go’ under the freedom of expression while no one has the right to manhandle those raising the slogan,” Khan said. “It is on the lips of everyone, men, women, even schoolchildren and police and military personnel,” he claimed.
Khan said that the PTI will knock the door of the court to stop any violence by PML-N activists against slogan raisers as threatened by PML-N leaders.
“I want to give you message Mr. Nawaz Sharif that the days of your kingdom are near to end,” he claimed.
“The gathering of the PTI supporters was the historical gathering in the history of Mainwali Today,” he claimed.
The PTI chief said that the government provides assistance to its farmers who receive subsidized electricity bills in neighbouring India while farmers receive electricity bills of six hundred thousand rupees in Pakistan.
He said that if farmers increase their yield, the country would get richer while the PTI government would support the farmers after coming into power.
Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2014