Islamabad: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Sunday once again rebuffed the ongoing robust campaign by opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) aimed at forcing early elections.

The next elections will not be held before 2018, when the 5-year term of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government ends, Sharif said in a statement.

The prime minister issued the statement as PTI chairman Imran Khan addressed an antigovernment rally in the city of Gujranwala, a PML-N bastion in Punjab province, home to 60 per cent of the country’s 180-million population.

According to reports, the police in Gujranwala foiled a plot by PML-N activists to raid the venue of the PTI rally and attack him with rotten eggs and potatoes.

The PTI plans to gather a mammoth crowd at the site of its continuing sit-in near the Paraliement House in the high security zone of Islamabad on November 30, which it says would mark the start of a decisive phase of its struggle for new elections.

Khan’s party has been holding demonstrations in different cities as part of its protest campaign launched in May against alleged fraud in 2013 elections.

In his statement, Nawaz Sharif said all political forces have stakes in the democratic system.

“We all know that loyalty to the constitution is an imperative for us, and it is no more an issue of choice,” the prime minister said.

“No system is perfect but constitution and parliamentary democracy are the only tools to remove imperfections,” Sharif said, adding that 2018 would be the year for Pakistanis to judge parties on the basis of their performance, and that they would have the chance to vote any party in or out.

The prime minister vowed that his party would have achieved a prospering Pakistan when it enters election mode in 2018.

With political temperature on the rise in Islamabad ahead of the planned massive PTI rally, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan invited the PTI to the negotiating table.

Talking to media representatives on Saturday the minister said that all issues should be resolved through dialogue and political means rather than sit-ins and pressure tactics.

The interior minister however made it clear to the PTI that it would have to take permission from the Islamabad administration for rally and warned that no one would be allowed to disturb peace in the national capital.

Imran Khan, in his address to the large cheering crowd in Gujranwala, warned Sharif and his interior minister against any rash action on the occasion of the PTI rally in Islamabad.

“I am inviting people from all parts of Pakistan to come to Islamabad on November 30.

“If you, Sharif and the interior minister order use of force against us, we will not tolerate this and respond appropriately,” the PTI leader warned.

Khan said had secured solid evidence on how the 2013 elections were rigged which he would make public on the eve of the Islamabad rally.

Also on Sunday, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Tahirul Qadri addressed a large rally at Bakhar in Punjab, the first after the firebrand cleric returned on November 20 from a foreign tour.

Qadri exhorted the nation to “rise up to dismantle the corrupt system and end stranglehold and domination of the elite represented by Sharif brothers.”