JI to march against corruption on July 24

Sirajul Haq demands accountability of incumbent govt and previous regimes.

Jamaat-e-Islami chief Sirajul Haq on Sunday announced that his party will stage an anti-corruption march in Rawalpindi on July 24 where they will decide the future of their “corruption-free Pakistan” movement.

He also warned that the rulers are trying to thrash out a new ‘National Reconciliation Ordinance’ (NRO).

Addressing JI members from PP-160 at Mansoora, the party’s Lahore headquarters, Haq said they will not allow the rulers a chance to craft a new NRO.

Talking about the Panama Papers, the JI chief said that had the rulers started the process of accountability from themselves, a lot of issues would have been resolved automatically. He added after such a step would have meant that no one would have dared to steal money.

He added that accountability was no longer the demand of any one party, rather it had become a cry of the entire nation and now every leader will have to be accountable for how and why public funds were transferred abroad.

In this regard he asserted that not only will the current government, but also past regimes who pilfered public money and secreted it abroad will also be held accountable.

He criticised the government’s heavy international borrowing, claiming that it was further entrenching the common man in debt.

Every three months Finance Minister Ishaq Dar proclaims happily that a new loan tranche has been approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), though the truth is that these loans are taken on stringent conditions while further loans are taken on to retire past loans. Despite this, the public is burdened with a slew of taxes,” Haq said.

The JI chief vowed that his party will go to any extent to get rid of infamous corrupt people of the country and eradicate corruption, coercive and oppressive systems. (TRANSLATION BY ARSHAD SHAHEEN)

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2016.