PESHAWAR: Grieving parents of children killed by terrorists in the Army Public School last month tried on Wednesday to stop Imran Khan and his wife from entering the school in protest against what they described as the insensitivity of the PTI chairman for getting married, ignoring the pain and scars left by the massacre of nearly 150 students at staff members.

Police escorting Mr Khan and his wife Reham Khan scuffled with the agitated parents, among them women, as they tried to clear way for the couple, other leaders of the party and provincial ministers which caused further anger and commotion.

Some parents accused Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Asad Qaisar of using ‘indecent’ language while forcing their way to the school’s main entrance.

Angry parents holding placards shouted ‘Go Imran, go’ and ‘Wapas Jao’ (go back), while Imran alighted from his vehicle, followed by Jehangir Tareen, to speak to the protesters. Pervez Khattak popped out of his vehicle, followed by Asad Qaisar.

When police tried to push the parents to a side, the alleged altercation took place.

A woman held Imran Khan by his collar and chided him for coming there with his newly-wed wife when parents were grieving for their lost children. The woman’s son, Asfand Khan, a class-X student, was among the 134 schoolchildren killed in the Dec 16 terrorist attack.

“What have you done?” she asked the PTI chief. “Did you ask anyone? Now you say you stand by us. You have come here to get yourself photographed. You have not come here for sharing our grief,” Asfand’s mother said.

“Our (KP) government woke up after one month. They were busy dancing in Islamabad because if they were here they would have done something about it,” said Mohamamd Usman, father of slain Fazl-i-Rahim, an 8th grader.

“No one from the KP government came to offer Fateha,” he said, adding that parents won’t let their children to be easily forgotten.

But inside the school, Mr Khan and his wife mixed with students and teachers, spoke to them and gave them autograph. Reham also visited the house of a family and offered Fateha.

KP Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani alleged that it was a politically-motivated protest organised by opponents of his party, the PML-N and Awami National Party.

But Imran Khan sounded consi derate and said he was at a loss over the protest by parents. “I came here to boost the morale of students. But I understand their grief. I respect the protesting parents and realise their grief. We are with the bereaved families at these hard times,” he said.

The parents, however, continued to picket outside the main entrance, forcing Mr Khan and his entourage to use the rear gate to leave the school.

Later addressing a press conference, Mr Khan asked the PML-N government to form a judicial commission to investigate the alleged rigging in 2013 general elections or face agitation which he said he would announce at his party’s ‘Dharna convention’ on Jan 18 in Islamabad.

“We have held a 128-day sit-in to force the government into holding an audit of four constituencies to see if elections were rigged. Now, it has been proved that the elections in these constituencies were massively rigged,” Mr Khan said.

“We will announce our future line of action if the government doesn’t form the judicial commission,” he warned.

He said a commission’s report on the NA-122 election presented to the election tribunal declared 34,000 votes invalid which meant that these were fake votes. The report had not been prepared by the PTI, he said, adding that the commission had checked every vote in 20 days.

“National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq should resign after the commission’s report. The votes cast without stamps, thumbs impression and national identity card numbers are bogus,” he said.

Similarly, he added, if bags did not carry form 14 and 15, votes were regarded as invalid. The bags in 128 polling stations didn’t have form 14 and 15 and those in 28 polling stations were found to be unsealed, he claimed.

“In NA-122, the commission found votes of NA-124 and votes in several polling stations were without serial numbers,” he said, adding that Ayaz Sadiq had no legal and moral authority to remain in his office after the revelation of fraud. “The speaker is a dark stain on the country’s democracy as well as politics,” he said.

The PTI chief claimed that fraud had also been unearthed in the constituencies where Hamid Zaman, Jehangir Tareen and Hamid Khan had contested the elections.

Mr Khan said the KP government was ready to hold local bodies’ elections, but the Supreme Court had stopped it from doing so because Punjab and Sindh had made changes in delimitation of the constituencies.

IDPs: The PTI chief said KP was under tremendous pressure because of the presence of people displaced from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and Afghan refugees and urged the federal government to provide financial assistance to the provincial government to support the displaced population.

“We have also requested the federal government to form a task force to start classes in the second shift for the displaced youths so that they could continue their studies,” he said.

POLITICS OF ANARCHY: In Islamabad, Information Minister Senator Pervaiz Rashid said that if Imran Khan did not shun the politics of ‘sabotage and anarchy’, slogans of “Go Imran, go” would be raised in every nook and corner of the country.

Talking to reporters outside the Parliament House on Wednesday, he said the slogan against the PTI chief had been raised by none other than the aggrieved parents of martyred students of the Army Public School, adding that the “fake slogan” which Mr Khan had been raising had now completely evaporated, adds APP.

Mr Rashid said that at a time when the government was fighting terrorists, Imran Khan had taken on the government.

He said he had given the PTI chief two offers — either to prove that the word bogus had been used in the commission’s report or agree on a forensic audit of ballot papers of Ayaz Sadiq’s constituency to prove authenticity of Mr Khan’s claims. But even after the passage of 48 hours, he said, the PTI chief was yet to respond to his offers. “It proves that the politics of Imran Khan over the past six months has been based on lies and deception.”

Mr Rashid accused the PTI chief of trying to obstruct the implementation of the national agenda against terrorists.

He said election tribunals examined allegations of irregularities in elections and the same process had been adopted in the NA-122 constituency where, he clamed, the votes of Ayaz Sadiq had further increased.

Published in Dawn January 15th , 2015

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