LAHORE: The Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) has announced boycotting the July 25 election to avert becoming a part of the system that protects corruption and electoral rigging.

Without naming names it has also chided PTI chief Imran Khan for falling for ‘electables’.

PAT chairman and fiery orator Dr Tahirul Qadri told a press conference on Saturday that ‘he couldn’t think of becoming a part of the electoral system and process that protect rigging and corruption”.

He lamented that Articles 62 and 63 had not been implemented in their true spirit during scrutiny of candidates (by the Election Commission of Pakistan) as many candidates with serious allegations of money-laundering, mass killings, corruption and human smuggling against them had been cleared to contest the polls.

Quoting figures from the past polls, he said the existing electoral system also lacked trust of voters as in 1988, 1990, 1997, 2002, 2008 and 2013 polls 47pc, 60pc, 68pc, 59pc, 60pc and 48pc voters, respectively, had stayed away from the polling stations.

Criticising the slow pace of accountability process, Mr Qadri said corruption was being committed at the speed of supersonic while work on the notices being issued by the accountability agency was being done at the pace of an ox-cart.

“(Accountability) notices were issued in plenty but with zero progress.”

Imran Khan had told PTI workers the other day that for his promised change in the country he needed to win the polls and that’s why he was issuing tickets on merit to those who were the electables.

In a veiled criticism of the statement, Dr Qadri said, “if winning horses were inevitable, there was no need for staging the sit-ins,” a reference to the PTI’s 126-day Islamabad sit-in back in 2014 against alleged rigging in the May, 2013 election.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2018