LAHORE - Jamhoori Watan Party chief Talal Bugti says the country faces an existential threat because of which the prevailing situation is not conducive for elections, especially in Balochistan.Talking to TheNation on Thursday, he said leaders from Punjab and other provinces should sit with the Supreme Court to decide whether polls were possible in the existing conditions and what should be done to steer the country out of the quagmire it was caught in.In his opinion a revolutionary leader like Ayatollah Khomeini, Mao Zedong or Lenin is needed to purge the society of all evils before thinking of fresh elections. He said these leaders had brought about drastic changes in their respective countries and the same was required to be done in Pakistan. He said the ‘revolutionary leader’ he was referring to should preferably come from Punjab, but did not say if he had any specific person in mind.The Baloch leader has been in the Punjab capital for the last few days, and during his stay he held meetings with leaders of various shades of opinion, including Mian Nawaz Sharif. Mr Bugti apprised them of the situation in his native province. Answering a question about the representative character of the Balochi legislators sitting in various houses, he said they represented none but their own ‘pockets’ and what he called ‘hidden hands’ at work in the province. He alleged that the so-called representatives had devoured billions of rupees given for development works in the country’s most backward and thinly-populated province. He called for a ruthless operation in Balochistan to recover from the stomachs of the so-called public representatives all they pocketed. He said such a step was indispensable before affording the electorates an opportunity to choose their representatives in fresh elections.Unless the looters were deprived of the ill-gotten money, free and fair elections would not be possible, Talal Bugti said. He said the people sitting in assemblies at present would use the same money in the next elections and with the support of hidden hands get elected again.Every legislator, without any discrimination, should be made to cough up all that he pocketed, said the JWP chief in very categorical terms.“They are eating up funds being given to them for development projects. There is just no development taking place in Balochistan. These people will use the funds to finance their campaign for the next elections.”Because of the role of these people, he alleged, Pakistan stood destabilised and was likely to disintegrate.Asked how the people of Balochistan could be dissuaded from voting for such characters, Bugti said: “If the wings of the hidden hands working in Balochistan are clipped and FC is withdrawn, the killings of Punjabis, Hazaras and others would come to an end and the situation would change.”The incumbent are the artificial leaders who would die their own political death in one year or a year and a half once the hidden hands stop supporting them. He was critical of the role being played by the FC in Balochistan and said the organisation should be disbanded immediately. “It’s a cancer,” he remarked, holding it responsible for the killings going in the province. When questioned how peace would be maintained in Balochistan in the absence of the FC, he said the situation would automatically normalise in a short time. “How was the province running when there was no FC,” he asked. He said all installations were there and tribesmen were protecting them.He indicated that tribesmen would maintain peace and take steps for the development of the troubled province.Responding to a question, he sarcastically said the ISI and the MI were the ‘popular forces’ in Balochistan and anybody flattering them would get elected. Nobody else (except these two agencies) has any standing in the province.He held these agencies responsible for creating a situation that people had to take up arms. He said it appeared as if these agencies were working on some foreign agenda.About the arrival and departure of Sardar Akhtar Mengal within a few days, the JWP chief said the former chief minister had acted according to a script. He said he was at a loss to understand why Mr Mengal had been staying in Dubai for the past five years and which disease he was suffering from that could be treated there but not in Pakistan.