GDA, JUI-F, JI mark black day against ‘polls rigging’

Opposition stages protests outside press clubs across Sindh

HYDERABAD:

The Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and their allies observed a black day across the province on Tuesday against alleged rigging in the general election.

The conglomerate of anti-PPP parties staged protest demonstrations in various cities to denounce the gerrymandering of poll results.

In Hyderabad, the participants of a protest rally walked for over half a kilometer from Haider Chowk to Society Chowk before staging a token sit-in outside the Hyderabad Press Club.

GDA leader Roshan Burriro said that once again allegedly corrupt and inept rulers had been imposed on the country through farce elections. He deplored that workers of the opposition parties who are taking to streets in protest are being booked in FIRs to harass them.

JUI-F's Maulana Taj Muhammad Nahiyon said the coalition government which has been built on the basis of massive rigging in the polls will not last longer in power. "We will send them home soon." Qomi Awami Tehreek's Altaf Khaskheli said adding the elections should be organised anew while declaring the recent polls as being marred by rigging.

Read Protests erupt across Sindh over alleged poll rigging

Meanwhile, addressing a protest rally outside Larkana Press Club, JUI-F leader Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Channa alleged that PPP used police and the provincial establishment along with billions of rupees in bribes to decide the outcome of the February 8 polls.

He asserted that the people of Sindh will never accept the rule in the province by the PPP whose 15 consecutive years of bad governance and corruption in the province are known to all and sundry.

The protesters chanted slogans, condemning the police for assaulting peaceful political protesters who were gathering outside the Sindh Assembly. Molana Muhammad Saleh Indarh of JUI-F said at a rally outside Sukkur Press Club that teargas shelling and baton charge on peaceful protesters amounted to silencing the opposition. He demanded that the stolen mandate should be returned to the public through fresh snap polls.

In Benazirabad the protesters gathered outside Nawabshah Press Club and chanted slogans against the Election Commission of Pakistan and the province's bureaucracy and police for abetting the crime of stealing the public's mandate in the recent elections. Jamaat-e-Islami's Sarwar Qureshi denounced the highhandedness and brutality of Karachi police which he said had unnecessarily charged upon peaceful protesters.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2024.