Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said that his party is ready for the general elections even if the polls are held the next day.
His statement came during an interview with Geo News programme “Capital Talk” on Tuesday, as days earlier Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari took a subtle jibe at his party’s former “allies”, saying they “are running away” from the elections.
“Conduct the elections tomorrow… we are ready for the polls even for tomorrow,” Fazl said, adding that his party kept calling for new elections during the three-and-a-half years of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led government.
The JUI-F leader — who was also the president of the 13-party coalition, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) — said that his party did not accept the results of the 2018 elections and held an all-parties conference (APC) immediately after the polls.
“The APC agreed that the [2018] election results will not be accepted,” he said, adding that it meant that all political parties unanimously demanded new elections.
Fazl said that his party was not in favour of taking the oaths on the seats it won in the 2018 elections but backed off on this stance as its allies, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the PPP were forming governments in Punjab and Sindh, respectively.
The former PDM chief went on to say that the JUI-F believed that the allies could have forced new elections by resigning from the assemblies as half of the national and provincial assemblies would have been vacated had their members resigned “but the establishment also didn’t want the immediate polls at that time”.
He also said that they had objections that when the PDM was being formed, the option of resignation was removed from the notification.
“We fought to get the option back,” he added.