Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan in his first public address since his party grabbed a lead in the preliminary General Election results shared his vision for the country and pledged to safeguard the interests of ordinary citizens.
Imran Khan, in a speech made in Bani Gala that was broadcast via video link, said he was thankful to have finally been given the chance to implement the manifesto he dreamed up 22 years ago.
He commended the people of Balochistan who voted on election day, despite a suicide attack that left 31 people dead, and the armed forces who provided security for the polls.
The PTI chairman also addressed outcry by opposition political parties that the elections had been rigged or manipulated, and promised to provide them the assistance required to investigate such allegations. In the same breath he dismissed such allegations, terming yesterday’s polls “the fairest in Pakistan’s history”.
“I want to clarify why I entered politics. Politics could not have given me anything. I wanted Pakistan to become the country that my leader Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had dreamed of.”
“I want to share the kind of Pakistan I envision ─ the type of state that was established in Madina, where widows and the poor were taken care of,” he explained. “Today our state is in shambles. [But] all our policies aim to help the less fortunate prosper,” he said.
“Farmers are not paid for their hard work, 25 million children are out of school, our women continue to die in childbirth because we can’t give them basic healthcare, we can’t give the people clean drinking water. A country is not recognised by the lifestyle of the rich, but by the lifestyle of the poor. No country that has an island of rich people and a sea of poor people can prosper,” he said.
Although he claimed to have “suffered the worst kind of personal attacks” that any political leader has had to sustain over the last three years, “this is all behind me now”.
“I pledge to safeguard the nation’s taxes. We will decrease all of our expenses,” he promised.
“Our institutions will be stronger, everyone will be held accountable. First I will be subjected to accountability, then my ministers and so on. Today we are behind [other countries] because there is a separate system for those in power and a separate one for ordinary citizens,” he said.
“We are facing governance and economic challenges. Our economy has never been so abysmal. It’s because institutions have not been doing their jobs,” he explained.
“People are not investing in Pakistan. Another problem is unemployment, our youth does not have jobs. We will introduce a system that has never been implemented before ─ a kind of governance system that has not been seen before in this country,” he promised.
A country that has the highest number of people giving charity, but the lowest amount of tax revenue, he claimed.
“Our government will decide what we will do with PM House. I would be ashamed to live in such a large house. That house will be converted into an educational institution or something of the sort,” he said.
“The point is, we have to improve our condition, we have to formulate policies with the business community to increase wealth,” he said.
“We will improve tax culture. People will pay taxes because they will see that their taxes are being spent on them. We will help farmers, the business community and help the youth to find jobs and develop their skills. Our money will be spent on human development,” he added.
This article is originally published on Dawn.com
