Opposition parties in Pakistan are keeping up the pressure on Prime Minister Imran Khan. The opposition party has held a series of mass protests against his government.
The party allege that the prime minister came to power through a rigged 2018 election backed by the military. Protesters demonstrated in the city of Peshawar on November 22, despite a government threat to ban gatherings due to the rise of coronavirus cases.
The Prime Minister, how came to power on an anti-corruption platform, has stated that the campaign is aimed at blackmailing him to drop corruption cases against the opposition leaders.
The powerful military of Pakistan denies interfering in politics and Khan rejects claims that the military helped him win. The next general election is on 2023.
Who is behind the rallies?
The Pakistan Democratic Movement or PDM has held a number of mass demonstrations since October 16. Its members range from a right-wing religious group to centrist and left-of-center mainstream parties and secular nationalists, according to The Guardian.
Rallies have taken place in three of the country's four provinces, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan. The rally on November 22 was the first the PDM has held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
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The rally was also attended by senior opposition political leaders such as the PDM chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawas, vice-president Maryam Nawaz Sharif and chairman of the Pakistan People's Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
The opposition parties also stated that they want to overthrow what they allege is an unrepresentative leadership, according Imran Khan's government of putting pressure on the judiciary and mismanaging the economy.
The PDM is the latest of a number of political coalitions which say that they aim to restore real democracy in the country's perpetual civil-military conflict. The one is boosted by the return of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to public politics.
In an unprecedented move for a former prime minister, Sharif directly criticized two top military officials, the chief of military intelligence agency ISI Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed and the chief of the army General Qamar Javed Bajwa. He alleged that they were also responsible for the country's political and economic woes.
Rigged election?
According to pre-election surveys in 2018, a clear majority for the PML-N was seen but Imran Khan's PTI ended up winning by a thin margin, according to Yahoo News.
Khan and his team say they won because the electorate was fed up with corruption under previous governments run by Sharif's PML-N party and former President Asif Zardari's PPP, according to CNN.
However, independent observers raised questions about the integrity of the election. The chief of the European Union, Michael Gahler, said that the mission had observed systematic attempts to undermine the ruling party ahead of the vote through corruption, contempt of court and terrorist charges against the leaders and candidates.
Before the election, Sharif was convicted on questionable grounds and he was disqualified from the process. Gahler said that the mission had not observed any direct election rigging on polling day, but concluded there was a lack of equality of opportunity among the parties and the process was not as good as 2013.
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