ABBOTTABAD: Two days after calling off a two-month-long anti-government sit-in in Islamabad, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Dr Tahirul Qadri on Thursday justified to supporters in Abbottabad his reasons for ending the dharna in the federal capital.
Qadri said that he would not have been able to take the ‘message of revolution’ from city to city had he continued the Islamabad sit-in.
“I do not travel by air. It would have taken me as many as 15 days to travel to all places. I could not have left behind my supporters in Islamabad,” he told thousands of supporters who had gathered in the Abbottabad valley to listen to the PAT chief.
Qadri's announcement on Tuesday ended 67 days of the protest sit-in in the federal capital which had set off a political crisis in the country. The PAT leader had said that protests would now be held all over the country, which he called the “next stage of the revolution”.
“It was God's will to give 'the Pharaohs' some time. The government did not immediately fall, but God gave us a gift. The entire nation awoke to the idea of revolution," he told supporters in Abbottabad.
“We are not going home - we will go from city to city. This is our journey of revolution,” said the cleric turned politician, who recently announced that he would participate in electoral politics and would bring down the status quo through the power of votes.
He claimed that even children were now urging Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to step down by shouting the slogan 'Go Nawaz Go!’
“The time is near when new-born infants will not cry but will shout 'Go Nawaz Go!’” he claimed.
“Who says the dharna is over? This dharna will become the death of the status quo,” he said.
He announced that PAT would hold a rally in Bhakkar on November 23, one in Sargodha on Dec 5, and on Dec 25 in Karachi.
“If the Bhakkar rally does not resemble scene from Minar-i-Pakistan, then I will call off the protest," he said, referring to the mammoth PAT rally in Lahore earlier this week.
The PAT chief also said that his party would hold a sit-in in Haripur tomorrow (Friday) in which he would also be present.
Earlier this week, Qadri and his alled parties had decided not to hold any public meetings or processions during Muharram keeping in view the sanctity of the month.