‘PTI to resume sit-in if rigging not probed’

Asad Umar says PTI will contest Senate polls only in KP.

LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Asad Umar said on Sunday the party would take to the streets again if voters did not get justice.

“We merely postponed our dharna [sit-in] in Islamabad following the December 16 terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. The government is now taking undue advantage of this,” he told participants of the Insaf Jawaan Convention. The PTI Punjab Insaf Youth Wing had arranged the event.

“If [Prime Minister] Nawaz Sharif and [Information Minister] Pervaiz Rasheed think that we have backed out of our stance, they are mistaken. That certainly is not the case,” Umar said.

He said the dharna had marked some of the most successful days of PTI chairman Imran Khan’s political career. He said the objective of the party’s agitation had not been the resignation of Nawaz Sharif but a challenge to rigging of the 2013 general elections. “We wanted a fair probe into the electoral rigging.”

Commenting on the scope of the judicial commission that the PTI is demanding to probe the alleged rigging, Umar said he and Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal had written their latest proposal together. “The government is not even considering the proposal,” he said.

He said the PTI was willing to talk to a political jirga regarding the matter.

He said the jirga consisting of Senator Rehman Malik and Jamaat-i-Islami chief Sirajul Haq had been holding consultations regarding formation of the commission.

Umar accused the government of resorting to ‘delaying tactics’ in response to the PTI’s demand that a three-member bench of the Supreme Court probe the rigging allegations. He said the PTI would explore all democratic ways to end the political standoff.

The PTI leader said the party would not take part in Senate elections in provinces other than Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 9^th, 2015.