Achakzai-led alliance vows to contest for its identity

ISLAMABAD: The Tehreek Tahafuz Ayeen-e-Pakistan (TTAP) has formed a legal team to fight a case to be taken up for hearing today (Tuesday) by the Election Commission of Pakistan, which it sees as a plot to snatch its title and sabotage its resistance movement.

Out of the blue, a petition has landed in the ECP, seeking to get enlisted the three-party alliance — Tehreek Tahafuz-e-Ain Pakistan (TTAP) — as a political alliance and allotted an election symbol.

Pakistan Aman Tehreek chief Ali Sher Yousafzai, Pakistan Falahi Tehreek chairman Fazal Aman Khan and Pakistan Welfare Party head Muhammad Farooq had applied for enlistment of their alliance and allotment of a joint election symbol. All these three parties are enlisted with the ECP.

Veteran politician Mahmood Khan Achakzai, who also heads his own Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), was made chairman of TTAP, weeks after the February 8 general elections; Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, PkMAP and Balochistan National Party-Mengal, are among the major parties of the alliance. The alliance alleges that the mandate of the PTI was stolen and it does not acknowledge the present government as genuine representative of the voters.

The opposition alliance recently put on hold its country-wide public meetings and protests, mainly, in the wake of floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. The spokesman for the alliance, Akhunzada Hussain confirmed to The News, when contacted, that they had obtained details of the case from the ECP on Monday through the opposition alliance’s lawyer and discussed the matter threadbare.

“From our side, our vice-chairman Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar and justice retired Shahid Malik sb and lawyers on behalf of our chairman Mahmood Khan Achakzai and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf will appear before the Election Commission bench on Tuesday,” he explained.

He emphasised that this is their apprehension that in order to sabotage their movement, undemocratic forces are behind this move and that they would legally defend their case by becoming a party to it before the ECP, he pointed out.

To a question, he clarified that theirs’ was an alliance for resistance to unconstitutional and undemocratic moves and to strive for the supremacy of the Constitution. “There have been alliances in the past, which were not registered with the Election Commission like PONM, APDM or PDM but they carried forward their respective movements. Therefore, we also did not get it registered, and never thought that certain people will be pinched so much by its name and will get aligned three parties this way and file a petition in the commission for an alliance and joint symbol,” he noted.