PTI hoping to put up massive show in Karachi ahead of polls

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan will address a public meeting at Bagh-e-Jinnah on July 22, three days ahead of the general election 2018, his party leaders said on Wednesday, hoping to gather at least half a million people.

No political party has been able to hold such a mammoth gathering or even the two-tenth of it in the city in recent years. However, the PTI is hopeful of making history as it claims having a considerable vote bank not only in the urban centres but across the province.

Speaking to a press conference at the intended venue of the event, PTI Sindh president Arif Alvi said that his party would replace the Pakistan Peoples Party in the provincial government and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in Karachi.

“Khan’s [this] jalsa holds much importance,” Alvi said, alleging that the authorities were putting hurdles in its way. He warned the deputy commissioner of District East to not “play games” with the PTI. “If permission is not granted then we may not be able to make the event as successful as intended.”

Taking a jibe at his political opponents, he said that the PPP was doing the politics of “thieves and plunderers”, which people had rejected. He asked how the MQM would go to the public to ask for votes amid its incompetency to deal with the garbage disposal and water crisis in the city.

PTI deputy general secretary Imran Ismail said that his party had sought permission for this event in May, but now the administration was making excuses to give the place to the MQM. He said that if permission was not granted, the party would not be able to make the gathering as successful as intended.

“We are expecting 500,000 people in our jalsa,” Ismail said. “Karachi is looking at Khan as the only option [to represent it].”

He added that people had rejected the traditional keepers of their mandate, the MQM, because in the past 30 years it could not deliver the goods. He said thatpeople were told lies and nothing else.

On a question about the controversial results of the population census 2017 about Karachi, he said that the population count was incorrect and his party was looking into the matter. According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the city population was around 17 million, while the MQM and the PSP claim that it is no less than 25 million.

The PTI’s Karachi president, Firdous Shamim Naqvi, said that the next prime minister of the country would be from Karachi and that was Khan. He said that people had had enough of all other parties and now they would choose the PTI.

Besides other parts in the country, Khan is also contesting an election in Karachi’s NA-243, where he faces the MQM’s Ali Raza Abidi, among other prominent candidates. Alvi is contesting for NA-247. Ismail is in the run for PS-111 and Naqvi is a candidate for PS-101.