The main event will take place in Rawalpindi, where JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman will address the gathering.
A photo of TTAP leader Mahmood Khan Achakzai. SCREENSHOT
LAHORE:
Fissures within the opposition camp widened in the run-up to protests planned for February 8, as Tehreek-e-Tahafuz-e-Aeen Pakistan (TTAP) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) blamed each other for a lack of coordination on Friday, while both sides insisted a broader alliance was still possible.
The JUI-F spokesperson said TTAP should have taken JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman into confidence before announcing its February 8 activities if it really wanted to keep the party on its side.
He blamed the divisions within the opposition on the PTI, while saying an alliance between the two parties in the near future remained a possibility.
The TTAP, on the other hand, claimed that Maulana Fazlur Rehman, despite being on the opposition benches, was not serious about joining a multi-party opposition alliance, citing the negative-sum political equation between him and the PTI, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Recently, both sides announced their protest plans for February 8, with the JUI-F nationwide demonstration deliberately designed to avoid conflict with TTAP activities.
JUI-F spokesperson Maulana Aslam Ghouri said the JUI-F, under the banner Awan Nai Medan, would hold protests across the country, one in each provincial capital of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, while in Sindh, protests would also be held at the district headquarters.
The main event will take place in Rawalpindi, where JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman will address the gathering.
When asked if the party would hold marches or rallies, he said it would only hold marches, as holding rallies would disrupt the TTAP gridlock across the country.
In response to the question of why JUI-F did not simply join TTAP to make a greater impact, he replied that the party’s doors were always open, but TTAP had never shown any real intention. From its first meeting until the recent announcement of the plan on February 8, he said, TTAP did not take the JUI-F leader into confidence.
He said that while both parties largely agree on the issue of massive rigging in the 2024 elections, the JUI-F believes that the PTI must also recognize that the 2018 elections were rigged in the same way and that rigging also took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2024.
He said these are the two main points of disagreement between the JUI-F and the TTAP.
Asked about any recent interaction between TTAP leader Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, he said the JUI-F leader was currently in South Africa and would return on February 6.
Former Sindh governor and TTAP member Muhammad Zubair said Maulana was not interested in uniting to form a common opposition movement.
He claimed that Maulana was fully aware that the success of any opposition movement would bring back Imran Khan and the PTI, a party which he believed had undermined his political ambitions in the KP.
Zubair dismissed the JUI-F’s claims that the 2018 and 2024 elections, as well as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa polls, were rigged, calling them far from reality. He said the massive and naked rigging in 2024 had no equivalent and claimed that the KP results were only kept intact to give the elections some global credibility.
