Rulers trying to put off polls: JI

Jamaat-e-Islami chief Munawar Hasan has said the rulers are not serious in holding elections on time and want to delay the polls for a year.
Addressing the Sheikhupura District Bar on Tuesday, he said the opposition parties would have to join hands and form a grand alliance on the one-point agenda of timely elections.
He said the tradition of timely elections in the country was very weak and the masses had to come on roads for the polls.
He said the rulers had planned to start a military operation in North Waziristan “under the cover of the Malala incident” but it had proved a failure. “The government may cook up some other excuse for this purpose,” he added.
Hasan said a change in the country through ballot appeared to be a dream, yet the JI did not want to adopt any other course.
He said the PPP and the PML-N provided cover to each other’s corruption.
The JI chief said the military operations could not bring peace in the country and the government should have to adopt the path of dialogue.
He said the US was anxious to hold talks with the Taliban while the Pakistan government was being prevented from holding talks with the Taliban despite the killings of innocent women and children by drone attacks.
“Afghanistan had become graveyard for the US just as it had proved a graveyard for Britain and the Soviet Union in the past.”
He called upon the army chief to explain why the armed forces were not being pulled out from Swat if peace had been restored there.
He said the strategy of war had changed with the passage of time and the use of force in Afghanistan for a decade had proved futile.