KARACHI: Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators gathered for a rally organized by a Pakistani opposition alliance in Quetta’s Ayub Stadium on Sunday, despite appeals by the Balochistan government to postpone the power show following a security threat issued by the national counterterrorism authority.
The anti-government alliance, Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), was formed by the country’s major opposition parties — Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) — in late September to start a countrywide campaign to remove Imran Khan's government and hold early elections.
The rallies have boasted huge crowds drawn in by the unlikely alliance of opposition parties that have scarcely ever been on the same page, with the first two rallies held in Punjab province’s Gujranwala followed by another one in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi.
Sunday’s Quetta rally is PDM’s third rally in ten days, with the stadium, boasting space for 20,000 people, choked to capacity.
Speaking via video link from Gilgit-Baltistan, where he is campaigning ahead of regional elections, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said Khan's regime was destroying the country's economy and that the government's multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was not benefitting the southwestern province of Balochistan where its main projects are underway.
“Imran Khan has given nothing to Balochistan. He wants to destroy the country’s economy. This is disaster, not change,” Bilawal said.
"The poor masses of the country are burdened by the incompetent and selected government. This is historic inflation and poverty."
Earlier, the rally’s first address came from former Prime Minister and PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif via video link from London, where he has been since November last year after securing medical bail from a local court in a corruption case.
Sharif has been accusing the military establishment of toppling his government, pressuring the judiciary and orchestrating Imran Khan’s rise to power in 2018 — the same year Sharif was convicted on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years in prison.
Addressing the crowds in Quetta, Sharif reiterated his earlier claims that Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed and Army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa had "meddled in politics" to bring to power Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
“I need answers which Gen. Bajwa has to give, Gen. Faiz Hameed has to give. General Bajwa, you have to be accountable for the theft of vote. You have to be accountable for the horse-trading. You will have to be accountable for enforcing Imran (Khan) Niazi by breaking the law,” the PML-N leader said.
Sharif’s daughter and PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz echoed her father’s words.
“The reason you are deprived of food and shelter is that your vote is not respected. Those who rule you are not answerable to you but to someone else, someone else pulls their strings,” Nawaz said, speaking to the crowds on stage in Quetta.
Some opposition leaders said they had been prevented from attending the rally.
National Assembly member and Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) leader Mohsin Dawar was stopped at Quetta airport on Saturday, reportedly over security concerns.
“I was not allowed to enter the city because I wanted to unite the Pashtuns and Baloch of the province. I was not allowed because I speak for human rights and rule of law,” Dawar told Arab News on Sunday.
While the security-flagged rally was underway, a bomb blast in a separate part of the city killed at least three people in a Hazara neighborhood. The separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, has claimed responsibility for the attack.