QUETTA: Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) chief Syed Munawar Hassan has said his party sees elections as a means of bringing about a revolution in the country and asked the people to reject feudal lords and tribal chieftains in the coming polls.

He urged the people to vote for the JI to bring about a positive change in the country. If they did so, security deposits of feudal lords and tribal chieftains would be confiscated.

He was speaking at a public meeting at the Municipal Corporation lawns here on Sunday that marked the launch of the JI’s election campaign in Quetta.

He said a revolution was needed to solve the problems the country was facing. “The country’s situation demands … an Arab Spring-like revolution,” he said, adding that the coming elections could be an alternative to revolution.

“Jamaat-i-Islami will take to streets if the elections bring no change,” he claimed.

He said the people of Balochistan had been deceived in the name of so-called (rights) packages.

Mr Hassan welcomed Balochistan’s nationalist parties’ decision to contest elections and said it would help in normalising the situation in the province.

He said it was an irony that retired general Pervez Musharraf, who had twice abrogated the constitution and was involved in the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti and the Lal Masjid tragedy, had returned to the country and was trying to contest the election.

“Musharraf should not be allowed to contest elections,” he insisted and said a strong election campaign should be launched against him in Chitral where his nomination papers had been accepted.

The JI chief alleged that political parties that had ruled the country until recently had acted upon US agenda and it had led to an anarchic situation in the country.

Similarly, he said, those who had remained in power in the country for 54 years had followed foreign agenda and got innocent people killed.

He said a few families, representing feudal and tribal aristocracy, had been ruling the country for the last 64 years and were responsible for pushing the country into slavery of the United States. “The JI will get the country rid of US slavery.”

Referring to what he called Afghan jihad, he said Afghan people had defeated both Soviet Union and United States. “I salute Afghan nation who has defeated two supper powers.”

The provincial Amir of the JI Abdul Mateen Akhundzada and others also spoke on the occasion.