LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami Chief Sirajul Haq has announced the countrywide protest demonstration on Sunday against the massive increase in petroleum products.
Addressing a press conference at Mansoora on Friday, he also rejected the laws to deprive oversees Pakistanis from voting rights, and making the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) a toothless body.
He said the leaders of the ruling parties promised to reverse the price index of basic commodities to the level of 2018 when they had launched the campaign to oust the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government through no-confidence motion. But, he added, they desperately failed to keep their words and dropped the bombshell on the poor masses.
The government acts, he said, proved the JI stance as true. The JI, he said, had already made it clear to the masses that the ruling parties (the PML-N, the PPP and the PTI) were the two sides of the same coin, having no agenda of public welfare.
Sirajul Haq said the PTI could not strengthen the system of accountability during its stay in power and now the current government made a step further and provided the ruling elite a free hand for making billions of rupees without being answerable.
He said the NAB might be a problem for the VIPs and those who sat in the assemblies but a common man has no issue with the accountability bureau. Instead of clipping wings of the NAB, he said, there was need to strength it.
The JI chief said the Pakistanis living abroad, who send billions of dollars as remittances in the country, must have their direct representations in the parliament. The JI, he said, wanted the overseas Pakistanis should elect their leaders to the national and provincial assemblies through elections within the countries they lived. Depriving them from voting rights was injustice to them and the JI rejected it, he added.
Sirajul Haq demanded the government to introduce riba-free budget and stop surrendering before the IMF conditions. He questioned how long Pakistan’s economy will remain dependent on foreign loans. He said there was need to end VIP culture, corruption and non-development expenses to revive the economy.
The government, he said, must enforce the Islamic model of economy and introduce Zakat and Usher instead of burdening the poor with massive taxation. He said the JI wanted the judiciary and election commission to act free and independent and establishment remain neutral.
He said the JI was playing a role of real opposition and struggling for the rule of law and people’s right. The country needed an Islamic system and the JI would introduce the same if voted to power, he said.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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