Ameer Jamaat-i-Islami, Pakistan, Syed Munawar Hasan has impressed upon the caretaker Prime Minister to convene an All Parties Conference to allay the apprehensions of the masses about the postponement of the elections. He said that in spite of the assurances by the Election Commission, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Army Chief, the people had doubts about the elections.
He said some people were talking about delay in the elections on the plea of poor law and order and terrorist activities, which was in fact a conspiracy to create anarchy and disorder in the country and could end up in a civil war. The JI Ameer said that during the last 10 years, there had been no letup in target killings, terrorism and abductions for ransom in the country therefore the only way to get out of terrorism and lawlessness was to hold fair, free and transparent elections and the transfer of power to the elected representatives.
Syed Munawar Hasan said Pakistan was facing the menace of terrorism only due to Pervez Musharraf's decision to jump into the US war and his dictatorial rule for a decade. However, delaying elections in the prevailing conditions was tantamount to throwing the country into turmoil, he added. The JI Ameer believed that the parties making tall claims in regard to the coming elections and claiming to be major parties too could not form government on their own.
Besides, he said, the people were quite awake as they had suffered long, and won't be duped by rosy slogans or tall promises. Instead they would be monitoring the performance of all the parties. He said people fully knew the PPP and its allies and those who had been in reconciliation with the PPP. It was due to the policy of reconciliation that the nation was now facing the curse of loadshedding of electricity, terrorism, corruption, lawlessness, priced hike and unemployment.
Munawar Hasan said the people had been satisfied over some initial measures adopted by the ECP as they thought that all the corrupt politicians and those holding fake degrees would be thrown out of the political arena but their hopes had been dashed when all such cheats and plunderers were allowed to contest elections, and now they had the impression that the elections could not bring any change. He further said that if rigging was not checked and the hooligans were successful in controlling the polling stations, the masses won't accept the election results.