In PTI kinship: Qadri roadshow heads to Faisalabad

Remaining PAT workers to leave for homes today

ISLAMABAD:

Taking their cue from their political ‘cousins’ in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) activists will also focus on holding rallies in different cities rather than concentrating all their efforts on the prolonged sit-in in Islamabad.

After staging a 58-day long sit-in along with his workers, PAT chief Dr Tahirul Qadri will leave his container in the high security red zone to address  the PAT’s maiden rally in Faisalabad on Sunday (today). He will hold meetings with political leaders of likeminded parties in Lahore on October 13.

On October 14, he will visit flood-ravaged areas in Punjab and will return to the D-Chowk on October 15. On October 19, he will again leave for Lahore to address another party rally at Minar-e-Pakistan and then on October 23, he will address a gathering in Abbottabad.

Dr Qadri has already asked his workers from Punjab and other parts of country – except for those belonging to the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad – to leave for their respective areas and make preparation for party rallies in different parts of the country.

Most of the workers at the sit-in venue left for their homes on Thursday and Friday while the remaining will leave on Sunday along with Dr Qadri. The party has also removed most of the camps on the Constitution Avenue while it has already wrapped up its camps in front of parliament house and at D-Chowk.

“There is no question of ending our sit-in at the Constitution Avenue. We believe in participatory democracy and the sit-in in Islamabad will continue till mid-term elections, which we expect very soon’, said the PAT deputy information secretary Umar Riaz Abbasi, while talking to The Express Tribune.

He said the PAT did not want to leave the ground open and wanted to participate in the next election. “We want to carry forward both the agenda of revolution and elections side by side,” he maintained.

He said that after Abbotabad party meeting, they would announce their next strategy. However, he said, every option was in the cards and ending of the sit-in could not be ruled out completely.

“We will take decision according to the situation. Our coming political rallies will be decisive and show how the public respond to us,” he added.

Abbasi said backdoor negotiation with the government were underway till Eidul Azha. “But talks could not be mature and there are no negotiations taking place at this time,” he added.

He said the PTI is a separate political party and it has its own agenda, adding that the PAT  decision to hold rally has nothing to do with the PTI’s policy.

He said thousands of the PAT workers participated in the PTI’s political rallies in Karachi, Mianwali and Multan. “And we expect that PTI workers will also come to our rallies,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2014.