ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf formally announced on Tuesday that its demand for early elections was the bare minimum the party would settle for on August 14.

However, addressing a crowded press conference, PTI Chairman Imran Khan said he would unveil the complete blueprint of how to have free and fair elections on the day of long march, which the party has named the ‘Azadi March’.

“The resignation (of) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif followed by re-elections will be the main demand of the long march,” Mr Khan said when pressed by reporters for details of his plans for the Independence Day demonstration.

“I will present a complete set of demands and the way to achieve them on August 14,” he said.

Asked if the PTI’s march on the capital and the demands for early elections were not paving the way for ‘undemocratic forces’, Mr Khan replied that he was struggling for true democracy, as the country right now was under ‘one-family rule’.

Sticking to his party’s guns on the question of electoral rigging, he said the PTI had been raising its grievances at various forums for over 14 months. Now, he said, the only option left to them was the Azadi March.

“Those who think we will go back without achieving our objective — removing this government, which has come into being as a result of ‘fake elections’ — are truly mistaken,” he said, referring to his party’s earlier demands for the resignation of all members of the Election Commission and punishments for those returning officers who had helped manipulate the 2013 elections.

When a reporter prodded the PTI chief on whether these demonstrations were being held on cue from the “powers-that-be”, he said it was Nawaz Sharif who was backed by the Inter-Services Intelligence early in his political career, referring to the Asghar Khan case.

When it was pointed out that senior parliamentarians, such as Mehmood Khan Achakzai, had criticised the PTI’s long march as an “anti-democratic movement”, Imran Khan said it was time for the entire political leadership of the country to understand the difference between ‘true democracy’ and ‘monarchy’.

He said he was in contact with other political parties that were also willing to resign from the National Assembly but he did not name them.

The PTI chief also did not rule out the possibility of an alliance with Dr Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek, which has also announced an anti-government demonstration around the same time.

PTI Vice Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi explained how the 2013 elections were rigged in various constituencies throughout the country to favour the PML-N.

He said that all the constituencies where vote verification had been ordered by election tribunals, massive irregularities had been found. “Therefore, by all accounts, the last polls were the worst-ever electoral exercise conducted in the country. The only way forward now is a re-election.”

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2014