By Our Web Desk
PESHAWAR– Chief of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said that there would be no substantial benefit of the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) planned long march to Islamabad if the opposition members did not resign from the parliament first .
Addressing a press conference in Peshawar, the PDM chief said the issue of the resignations had been put on the agenda for the opposition alliance’s meeting tomorrow. “In my personal opinion, if we don’t submit resignations from this parliament then there may not be a lot of benefit to the long march,” he said.
He said, divided over the issue of submitting resignations from the assemblies at a time when the long march is just two weeks away, the heads of the component parties of the PDM will hold a crucial session in Islamabad on Tuesday. He said the PDM meeting will discuss the final plan of action for the march, scheduled to take place around the end of the month.
Fazlur Rehman criticised the recently held Senate chairman and deputy chairman elections, terming them “rigged”. He claimed this was clear in light of the irregularities that occurred during the polls.
He claimed that the opposition was given the message that despite being in the majority in the Senate, it would lose to the minority. “The whole nation is seeing this kind of interference in the country’s politics since 2018,” he said, questioning who had planted the secret cameras found in the Senate hall and election booth.
The PDM chief asked why “valid votes” of the opposition were rejected and why they were “reduced” in the vote for the Senate deputy chairman, which JUI-F’s Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri lost. “Why are these loyalties changing? Someone must be changing them and there must be some pressure. Some people must be working on it and giving offers of greed and threats [to our members]”.
He also hit out at the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for seeking Maryam Nawaz’s bail cancellation in the Chaudhry Sugar Mills case. “The allegation is that she speaks against the institutions and is taking undue benefit of being released on bail. Is NAB the spokesperson of the institutions?” Rehman asked.
He said if the NAB, whose responsibility was to eliminate corruption and conduct the accountability process, was becoming a spokesperson of other institutions, “then this proves our claims that this institution is a puppet of other powerful institutions”.
The PDM Chairman alleged that in this kind of situation, the country’s politics was not being run according to the Constitution, saying “the courts have become the last hope.”
