THERE have been contradicting claims about the number of people attending opposition rallies. While reports indicated crowd attendance from 8,500 to 18,500 people at the Minar-i-Pakistan rally in Lahore, the opposition claimed there were ‘hundreds of thousands’.

Let us say there were 100,000 people at each of their seven rallies in recent times, and that will put the total turnout at 0.7 million, or 1.18 per cent of the available voters as judged from the 2018 elections.

An opposition spokesperson claimed that the people had given their decision for the government to step down. How can a mere 1.18pc of the available voters give such a decision for a democratically-elected government? Even if this was multiplied several times over, it would still be an abysmally low figure.

It takes several months to organise an election, check candidates’ credentials, train returning officers, set up voting stations and balloting procedures for free and fair elections, and for maximum number of voters to participate. The opposition should stop playing politics to dismantle the government.

Rafi Ahmed

Karachi

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2021