‘We accepted the elections, not the rigging’: Imran vows protests from May 11

“We had accepted the election, but we have not accepted the rigging,” says Imran Khan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan vowed on Friday to start protests against what he claimed was widespread rigging in the 2013 general elections from May 11, a year after the watershed polls that saw his party rise to power in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and become the third largest party by seats in the national assembly.

Addressing a rally in Islamabad to mark PTI’s 18 years, Imran announced the party’s decision to begin a fresh round of protests for a free and fair election commission.

“Iftikhar Chaudhry, you were also involved in this match fixing,” he said, accusing the former chief justice of Pakistan of being complicit in the election rigging.

“On May 11, we will begin our protest to struggle for a transparent election process,” Khan said, adding that a free and fair election commission was absolutely necessary for a healthy democracy. He added that the subversion of the electoral process was a violation of Article 6 of the Constitution.

“We had accepted the election, but we have not accepted the rigging,” he said, adding that those who were involved in the rigging should be exposed and brought to justice.

“For the sake of the constitution, for the sake of democracy and for the sake of our children’s future we will start this movement on May 11 and we will not stop no matter what we have to sacrifice.”

“We will approach the current Supreme Court and request them to fix the electoral process,” he said.

He welcomed all political parties who thought the last general elections were not fair to become part of PTI’s protest movement.