QUETTA: Pakistan Demo­cratic Movement (PDM) president Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said the people across the country and the 10-party opposition alliance are on the same page, as they consider the 2018 elections were massively rigged.

“People’s response to the PDM public meetings is unprecedented,” the Maulana said while speaking to reporters soon after his arrival from Islamabad here on Tuesday.

He will lead a PDM rally from Quetta to Loralai, where the 10-party alliance against the government would hold a public meeting on Wednesday. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz vice president Maryam Nawaz is also expected to attend the PDM show in Loralai and former prime ministers Yousaf Raza Gillani and Raja Pervez Ashraf would represent the PPP.

Says stolen mandate is no more a secret

Also, Mehmood Khan Achakzai of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and leaders of other member parties of the alliance would participate in the public meeting.

Maulana Fazl said the government had no moral justification to remain in power and it would have to resign as the PDM and the people across the country were on one page. “The mandate of the people in the last elections was stolen and it is no more secret,” he said, adding that the opposition did not accept it.

The PDM president believed that there would be a big gathering in Loralai.

Criticising the government over the recent Mach incident, the Maulana asked if the government was claiming that there was no more terrorism in the country then why the coal miners had been slaughtered. He said there were reports of targeted killings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also. Innocent people were being martyred while the government claimed to have crushed the backbone of terrorism in the country, he said.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2021