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India-Pakistan
Opposition leaders sans Shahbaz Sharif lead protest against ‘rigging’ in Islamabad
2018-08-09
Looks like The Resistanceâ„¢ is gathering there too.
[DAWN] Opposition parties held a protest demonstration outside the Election Commission of Pakistain (ECP) in Islamabad on Wednesday against alleged rigging in the July 25 general elections. PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif
...Pak dynastic politician, brother of PM Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab...
, however, was not in attendance.

The PML-N president could not fly to Islamabad from Lahore due to bad weather, said party spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb.

The decision to hold the protest was made by the newly formed 11-party grand opposition alliance, named ’Pakistain Alliance for Free and Fair Elections’, at a multi-party conference held in Islamabad on Friday.

Apart from the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistain Moslem League-Nawaz (PML-N), the opposition alliance comprises Awami National Party
founded by Abdul Wali Khan in 1986. Part of the PPP-led cabinet 2008-13. The ANP is considered left wing, advocating for secularism, democratic socialism, public sector government, and economic egalitarianism....
(ANP), Qaumi Watan Party (QWP), Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), National Party (NP) and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA).

Maulana Fazlur Rehman
Deobandi holy man, known as Mullah Diesel during the war against the Soviets, his sympathies for the Taliban have never been tempered by honesty ...
, chief of his own faction of the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam
...a Pak religious party. It is usually part of the govt, never part of the solution...
and president of the MMA, who arrived after the protest had been going on for a few hours, said: "The only reason why all political parties have joined hands today is because the ECP failed to conduct free and fair elections."

Leaders of the PML-N, according to reports, refused to address the gathering when they were invited to do so.

PPP's Sherry Rehman, Khursheed Shah and Farhatullah Babar, former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
... Pakistain's former prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics could be awe-inspiring ...
, and PML-N's Ahsan Iqbal were among the leaders who took part in the protest.

Workers numbering in hundreds gathered in the capital. Participants rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud about their respective political parties as well as the alleged rigging. Security officials were deployed in the area to maintain law and order.

Posted by:Fred

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