Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has decided to sit in the opposition benches in Parliament, which he alleges is not the public’s representative.

“This Parliament is a by-product of rigged elections,” the religio-political leader said at a press conference in Karachi on Sunday.

His announcement comes six days before the presidential election where SIC backed Mahmood Akhan Achakzai will face PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari.

In the run-up to the poll, members from both sides have reached out to Fazl to seek support for the vote.

“We have decided to enter Parliament with reservations. The rigging in 2024 elections broke the record of rigging in 2018 elections,” he said and claimed that democracy was at stake in the country and Parliament was losing its value.

“The parliament that you are seeing is not the representative of the people, this parliament is a birth of rigging in which some people will call themselves leaders,” he said.

According to the JUI-F chief, the assemblies of Balochistan and Sindh were bought. He did not mention by whom. The two provinces are ruled by the Pakistan Peoples Party after the election of Murad Ali Shah and Sarfaraz Bugti as chief ministers.

He told reporters that his party would make a plan for running a campaign across the country. “We had rejected the election results.”