KARACHI: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan has ruled out any alliance with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to form a coalition government in case the upcoming elections produced a hung parliament.

Mr Khan, who arrived in the city on Sunday, besides visiting and speaking at camps set up in different parts of the city as part of the PTI’s membership campaign, also addressed the ‘Meet the Press’ programme of the Karachi Press Club.

In reply to a question at the press club whether his party would accept Asif Zardari as president to form its government in the centre if none of the political parties got a majority in the elections, Mr Khan rejected the suggestion outright. He said how could he form an alliance with someone he had been criticising for the past 22 years.

He said rulers in Sindh had failed to deliver because their sole aim was to mint money from Karachi and transfer it to Dubai, instead of spending on people.

PTI chief asks Karchiites to give chance to a party that has never been tested before

Holding Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif responsible for the `destruction’ of the country, Mr Khan said both of them would be clean-bowled in one ball in the next elections.

The PTI chief blamed the powerless local government system for all the problems being faced by the people of Karachi, including garbage dumps all around and supply of water mixed with sewage. He said the change was the need of the hour in Karachi as the city needed a unique local government system.

He said he was visiting Karachi again and again to make people realise that they should give a chance to a political party which was never tested before because those who were given the mandate earlier had failed to deliver.

Mr Khan claimed that the best local bodies system was in the PTI-ruled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but the other provinces did not like to introduce it because it would endanger monopoly of provincial governments. He said Karachi had been ruled by the people who hailed from the interior of Sindh.

He stressed the need to elect the mayor of Karachi by direct election like the mayor of London and elsewhere in the world.

The PTI chief said if his party was given a chance it would solve basic problems of Karachi. He said Rangers were deployed in the city because the police had failed to restore peace. At present, he claimed, KP was the most peaceful province where not only crime rate had come down but incidents of terrorism were also almost non-existent.

In reply to a question, Mr Khan said Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was still a child who was unaware of the situation prevailing in the country.

He termed the outcome of the Senate election a victory for Pakistan, which also augured well for Balochistan. He said the PTI did not allow Nawaz Sharif’s nominee to become the Senate chairman, otherwise the PML-N leader could have used him to make laws in his own favour.

The PTI chairman said that after coming to power his party would strengthen parliament. “Unlike Nawaz Sharif our prime minister would be accountable to parliament like in Britain,” he added.

In reply to another question, he said forming an alliance with a party whose chief was corrupt would amount to supporting corruption.

Earlier talking to newsmen at Karachi airport, Mr Khan recalled that the chief justice had given one week to remove garbage from Karachi. During the past 10 years of its rule in Sindh the PPP had ruined the province, he added.

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2018