A populist Pakistani cleric who led mass protests demanding sweeping political reforms has said that he will boycott the forthcoming general elections in the country.
This is just an election of money, might and manipulation. That is why I decided my party should not take
part,” Tahir-ul Qadri, a religious moderate who has written a fatwa against terrorism and suicide bombings, said yesterday.
He founded a small political party in the 1980s, but took until 2002 to get elected to parliament under military
dictator Pervez Musharraf, only to resign two years later allegedly fed up with the system. He then left for Canada.
The polls, expected by mid-May but for which no date has been fixed as yet, will mark the first democratic transition between two civilian governments in Pakistan, where the military remains powerful after staging three coups.
Qadri had in January led the largest political rally in years in capital Islamabad after returning suddenly from seven years in Canada, sparking panic about a rumoured judiciary-military plot to derail elections.
He accuses parties in power of using millions of dollars of state funds to bankroll their election campaigns and says that candidates who refuse to pay taxes should not contest.
According to a report from the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan, more than 60 per cent of the outgoing cabinet and two thirds of its outgoing federal lawmakers paid no tax in 2011.
My struggle is a reformist movement struggle.
Sometimes you don’t achieve the result within a couple of months, or one year, two years — you have to struggle for a long time,” Qadri told AFP in a telephone conversation.
A former university academic who taught Islamic law and jurisprudence, Qadri set up Tehreek-e-Minhaj-ul-Quran, a
religious and educational network promoting inter-faith harmony which operates in more than 70 countries.
Qadri called off his January rally after the government said he would be consulted on the appointment of a caretaker prime minister in the run-up to polls and that there would be a 30-day period for candidates to be screened.
The government and the election commission have both, one by one gradually, backed out from all of those commitments,”said Qadri even as politicians remain locked in talks trying to agree on a caretaker premier.
————————(AFP)