ISLAMABAD, Sept 12: Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan was against giving the army any role in ruling of the country and said: “I have been opposing Turkish model and will not accept its semblance in Pakistan”.

He was struggling to break the status quo by hitting out at its very bases; the feudals and the political manipulators, he had therefore refused to join them in the elections, he said.

In an exclusive interview with this reporter, he said: “my intentions were clear and my vision was to give such politicians a tough time who had exploited their position and corrupted the politics for their personal gains that was why I did not ally with any traditional political entity”.

About the chances of his party in the October polls, he claimed his party would fare very well keeping in view the substantial increase in its vote bank as a result of lowering of voters’ age”.

On coming to power, he said, we will establish special tribunals to try all such politicians, who were exploiting and victimizing the poor people with their unholy activities, the former cricket hero turned politicians said.

When asked, if he was also pressurized by the forces who had helped galvanise national alliance and then grand national alliance, he said,(smiling) yes, they had approached me but I did not agree to join the bunch of politicians who, in my view consisted of opportunists and joined the pro-government bogey in each elections.

He blamed the hereditary politicians for the ever declining interest of common voters in elections, as a result of which, the turnout in successive polls had been declining with the fear that it would be lowest in coming polls, except for where youth would be mobilized properly (meaning the PTI).

He said there should be a judicial system in which the political exploiters who victimize the poor for not voting in their favour and award them substantial punishment to become a deterrent for others.

Justifying his support to Musharraf’s government Imran said: “My support to the general was because he had talked of breaking the status quo and eradicating corruption from the elite class but in the end it appeared the other way round”. Moreover, he clarified, my support to military regime was issue based as I supported his agenda of economic revival but opposed his economic policy particularly with respect to the IMF and World bank.

Imran admitted that backing the presidential referendum was wrong because it later turned out to be a total farce.

“We withdrew our conditional support to the military government when we saw a King’s party being formed under official patronage and utilization of state resources for its success,” said Imran Khan.

He asserted that if he had any urgency to join the government he would have done it quite early and would have joined Nawaz Sharif in 1997 polls to get some handy seats in the parliament.

To a question, if his party would boycott the polls at the last moment seeing the pre-poll rigging, he said: “Never, we will not leave the ground for looters to occupy it so easily. We will continue with our election campaign”.

He said his party would consider cooperation with other parties on one point agenda, if a joint movement to oust the military from power was necessitated following massively rigged polls.

Replying to a question with regard to readily available political support to every military dictator, he said the military governments were always vulnerable and recounted the fall of Ayub Khan’s government by a few protest rallies.

However, he maintained, it was peoples’ pressure alone which could deter army intervention. He cited example of recent military take over in Venezuela, where the deposed president had to be restored on peoples pressure.

In response to a question about his views on post October 10 polls he said: “To me there looks more confusion as there will be no single party in position to form the government and the agencies were already manipulating the situation in favour of the government”.

He criticized politicizing of local government system, which was otherwise a good change, as Nazimeens were running the pro government parties campaign in Punjab and elsewhere.

He opposed the role of any agency including ISI in politics and the people should be trusted for making decisions of changing the governments.

Imran supported an independent and powerful election commission which could disqualify anyone involved in corruption or violating rules.

Speaking about the presidential amendments in the constitution, he said: “these cannot be justified nor accepted as right because only an elected parliament had the right to make amendments”.