Islamabad, Pakistan: The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has rejected the February 8 general elections results terming the polls to be rigged worse than those of 2018.
JUI which became the second largest party by bagging 10 provincial seats in Balochistan believes that elections were rigged because the family of Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s family lost all seats to independents in KPK province.
While addressing a Press Conference on Wednesday in Islamabad Maulana Fazlur Rehman blamed state institutions for rigging to keep JUI-F out of mainstream politics. He also refused to favor PMLN to form government in the Centre.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman before General Elections 2024 raised concerns and demanded that General Elections 2024 must be postponed due to the law and order situation he also visited Kabul and held a meeting with the Afghan interim government to seek the support of the Taliban government for his elections in Pakistan because Maulana Fazlur Rehman believed that Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP) was not allowing JUI-F to do Election campaigning freely. It is no secret that TTP operates from Afghanistan against Pakistan having operational support from the Afghan interim government therefore it was a sane move of JUI-F leadership to seek help from the Afghan government for safety from TTP’s actions against JUI-P. After this successful meeting, JUI-F got a chance to hold public meetings and campaign freely but TTP intensified its terror acts against Pakistan’s armed forces.
In Thursday’s press conference, the JUI-F chief said that he was not allowed to campaign but statement institutions did not listen to him.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s allegations against state institutions after losing the election are seen as a nefarious attempt to blame the failure on institutions. Moreover, during the press conference, Maulana Fazlur Rehman failed to answer that if there was rigging planned for his party how could his party emerge as the second largest party in Balochistan after the elections? Moreover, he also failed to name the beneficiary of this alleged rigging.
His opponents believe that Maulana Fazlur Rahman after losing the KPK province, has lost his political sense because he is not ready to accept the reality that people have rejected JUI’s politics in Sindh and KPK—two strongholds of JUI-F in the early 90s.
Maulana Fazlur Rahman also refrained from answering questions in press conferences about what agenda he is trying to achieve by creating a state of excitement in the country by giving a statement that decisions will be made in the fields instead of the parliament.
Since May 9, 2023 events have had a sensitive soft belly of state institutions, Maulana Fazlur Rahman hit on that and indirectly claimed that the winning of his opponents in KPK indicated that the public voted for those who attacked military installations. However, election results showed that 17 million voted for candidates affiliated with PTI involved in the May 9, 2023 events while 43.5 million voted against that party, rejecting PTI’s policies of attacking state institutions. Such a large number of votes against PTI is clear proof that the people have completely rejected the May 9 facilitators the people no longer want the politics of anarchy and the narrative of May 9 is not only buried but the people are standing side by side with the state institutions.
