LAHORE – Minhaj-ul-Quran Chief Dr Muhammad Tahirul Qadri has said that elections whether to be held sooner or later under the present system will be a joke with the nation.

Addressing a special meeting of Majlis-e-Shura of MQ through video conferencing on Sunday, he said outcome of the present electoral system was that the institutions were pitted against each other. More than 1000 office holders of different chapters of MQ attended the meeting. Faiz-ur-Rehman Durrani, Dr Raheeq Abbasi, Sheikh Zahid Fayyaz, Ahmad Nawaz Anjum, GM Malik, Raja Jamil Ajmal, Rana Fayyaz Ahmad, Altaf Hussain Gilani, Anwar Akhtar, Jawad Hamid, Rana Muhammad Idrees, Aqil Malik and others were also present on the occasion.
“Those who consider elections as solution of prevailing problems are befooling the masses. Handover of authority to another group of privileged elite in the name of elections will be a national crime as it will further compound the problems instead of solving them”, Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri said, adding, the present system has given nothing to the nation except inflation, dearness, energy crisis, clash among institutions, unemployment, neglect of social sector, corruption and overall national paralysis. He further said that those claiming to bring about change in the elections would not get anything except disappointment. He said that both the religious and political parties were part of the system.
He made it clear that he did not want to change the constitution or state structure but electoral system which the political parties and privileged elite had erected for protection of their vested interests. He said that political and religious parties put their manifestos at the backburner and replaced it with exchange of abusive and harsh words. He said that people in the developed democracies voted on the basis of manifestos but in Pakistan the culture of winning horses held sway, which was the major hurdle in the way of emergence of competent and able leadership. The country could come out of prevailing crises by changing the electoral system. He said that MQI stood for reforms. But there was a need to shore up economy, improve law and order situation, give relief to hard pressed people and eliminate terrorism and extremism. This called for setting up of a national government.
MQI’s Secretary General Dr Raheeq Abbasi moved a resolution against price hike, power outages, terrorism and militancy and target killing which the Majlis-e-Shura adopted with unanimity. The Shura rejected the present electoral system through a resolution.