Pakistan’s opposition alliance hints at anti-government ‘long march’ next year

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani opposition alliance said on Monday it was finalizing its anti-government protest strategy including a long-march on Islamabad along with shutter-down and wheel-jam strikes across the country to oust the government.
A steering committee of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an alliance of some nine opposition parties, has prepared suggestions and proposals for the movement which would be presented to a meeting of the heads of its component parties on Tuesday.
The opposition parties have been struggling to oust Prime Minister Imran Khan since September 2020 when they formed the PDM alliance and launched their anti-government campaign.
Khan’s party won the July 2018 general elections in Pakistan, though the opposition has always maintained that the electoral contest was rigged and manipulated.
However, the government vehemently denies the charge.
“A long-march [on Islamabad] can be held in March while a sit-in also remains one of the options,” Hafiz Hamdullah, a PDM spokesperson, told reporters after a four-hour steering committee meeting held in the federal capital.
The opposition parties have already been holding mass gatherings in different cities of the country as part of their public mobilization campaign before initiating a “decisive push” against the government next year.
Hamdullah said a public gathering in Lahore, long-march, wheel-jam and shutter-down strikes were on the opposition’s agenda, adding that a high-level PDM meeting on Tuesday would review these suggestions and take the final decision.
He informed it had also been decided in today’s meeting to move the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the recent electoral reforms passed by a joint sitting of parliament.
The government made use of electronic voting machines mandatory in the next general elections through its recent legislation, besides granting voting rights to about nine million overseas Pakistanis.
Referring to a recent audio leak of a former chief justice of the Supreme Court, Hamdullah said questions were being raised over the integrity of the judiciary while the opposition had also expressed their reservations over judicial matters.
“We will play on both the pitches by doing things in and out of parliament,” he said as he responded to a question regarding the possibility of en masse resignations of the opposition members from parliament to bring down the government.
Two major opposition parties, the Pakistan Peoples Party and Awami National Party, previously left the PDM since they did not agree with the alliance’s anti-government strategy.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam are now the only two major opposition factions in the PDM alliance.