DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak on Thursday asked the federal government not to create hurdles to the November 30 Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf rally against it in Islamabad.

After participating in a condolence reference for the mother of provincial revenue minister Ali Amin Gandapur here, the chief minister said the interior minister shouldn’t order the placing of containers on the roads to stop people from participating in the rally of his party, PTI.

He said PTI would continue exercising its democratic right of holding peaceful protests against the problems of the system for the people’s benefit.

“We (PTI) will stage a peaceful rally in the federal capital against massive rigging in the last general elections,” he said.

Khattak said he didn’t foresee any confrontation on Nov 30 as his party had long been holding peaceful rallies and public meetings against the election rigging without going against the Constitution.

He said the law or the Constitution didn’t stop him from participating in the Nov 30 rally as the elected chief minister of the province.

“It’s a (my) democratic right to raise voice against injustice, corruption, poverty and loadshedding. I’ve always acted in compliance with the law and the Constitution and will do so in future, too,” he said.

The chief minister said PTI was vigorously pursuing its manifesto to extend relief to the people by resolving their problems and to eradicate corruption and other menaces from the province.He said his government had sent 140 amendments to laws to the provincial assembly for legislation showing its performance on lawmaking front.

Khattak said the PTI sit-in and public meetings had made the people aware of problems in society, including injustice, corruption, unemployment, poverty and loadshedding. Earlier, he prayed for the soul of the revenue minister’s mother.

The chief minister was accompanied by ministers Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani, Inayatullah Khan, Shahram Khan Tarakai, Ziaullah Afridi, Mian Jamsheduddin Kakakhel, Amjad Afridi and Imtiaz Shahid Qureshi, advisers to the chief minister Ishtiaq Urmar and Mohibullah Khan, and MPAs Ehtesham Javed Akbar Khan, Javed Nasim, Gul Said Khan and Azam Swati.

Also in the day, a handout was issued in the provincial capital quoting the chief minister as alleging that the federal government was the production of rigged elections and had come to power with the help of fake mandate of the people. The chief minister complained inflation rate was growing in the country and that the people faced gas and power shortages.

He said if the rulers failed to deliver, the people would come onto the streets to protest.

Khattak said the entire nation seconded PTI chief Imran Khan’s call for Nawaz Sharif’s resignation from the office of the prime minister over rigged polls. He said Imran Khan would lay facts on election rigging before the people.

The chief minister said his government’s priority was to replacing the outdated system of governance with an effective one.

“We’re introducing effective legislation for changing the lives of the people for better. Until now, we’ve got more than 150 legal reforms and amendments to laws passed by the provincial assembly,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2014