Daily Times

Federal Minister for Interior Sheikh Rashid has said that PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has “played a game” with JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman by not attending the opposition’s protest outside the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in Islamabad. “You [Fazl] have been fooled [by Bilawal]… he [Bilawal] is celebrating in Umer Kot whereas you [Fazl] are being pushed and shoved here,” the minister said minutes after Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) concluded its protest staged outside the election organising authority’s office on Tuesday.

The PDM – an alliance of nearly a dozen opposition political parties – demanded the ECP to conclude hearing of the foreign funding case against ruling PTI at the earliest. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz, while addressing the protesters, said the foreign funding case involving the ruling PTI is the ‘worst kind of fraud’. Prime Minister Imran Khan cannot blame his ‘agents’ for the wrongdoing when he knew about it, she added. Sheikh Rashid responding to opposition leader’s tirade said following the opposition’s “flop protest”, they are welcome to march on Islamabad tomorrow instead of next month. “Today’s protest has badly exposed the opposition’s strength,” the federal minister said while maintaining that the alliance of multiple opposition parties have failed to gather more than 3,000 people in the protest rally despite no hurdles created by the authorities to stop their workers from gathering in the federal capital. “There are more students in Maulana Fazl’s seminary in Islamabad than the number of people gathered by opposition parties [outside the ECP],” Rashid added.