JI to start inflation long march on 10th

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami announced resisting strongly any attempt by the government to provide legal protection to the new terms of the IMF loan, besieging the houses and offices of lawmakers and IMF officials, holding demonstrations.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, JI secretary general Amirul Azeem also announced that JI would hold a three-day inflation long march from Lahore to Islamabad on February 10, led by JI ameer Sirajul Haq. He said poor masses were neither ready, nor forced to make any more sacrifices on IMF terms.

He alleged that PDM government was brought into power but lost the right to rule by its incompetence, demanding elections should be held in the entire country. He warned that if the current government does not end, then only the elite class will survive in the country. He demanded ban on the import of all luxury goods except raw materials, and withdrawal of privileges to the elite class on public expense.

He called for the withdrawal of cases against the leader of "Gwadar Ko Haq Do Tehreek" Maulana Hidayat Rehman and his associates, release of arrested people and provision of fundamental rights of the people of Gwadar. He said the second agenda item of Mehngai March is the rights of the people of Gwadar. He appealed to the nation to come out of their homes for their rights. He demanded the completion of local bodies in the four provinces, and strongly condemned the bomb blast in the mosque of Peshawar and described the incident as a failure of the government and agencies.

He said the government dropped petrol bombs on the people even before the start of negotiations with the IMF, now the electricity tariff is increasing. He said IMF delegation’s conditions made it clear that they were going to kill the poor and provide protection to the elite, adding that IMF's agenda was to make Pakistan a consumer-based society, not to reduce country’s trade deficit, their actions were a conspiracy against the country's security.

He asked why IMF has never raised the issue of corruption of the ruling elite and never put conditions of auctioning the palatial residences of rulers and bureaucrats on acres of land to payback loans. He said that if the loans taken in the past were spent on development of the country and people’s welfare, education, technology and health instead of pocketing by the rulers, loans would no more needed.

Amir-ul-Azeem said earlier the term "election-rigging" was common in the country, now judiciary-rigging has also been added to it, and referred to sudden clean chit exonerations from the courts to yesterday's proclaimed offenders, convicted, NAB-wanted people involved in massive corruption, while former ministers’ advisers are being caught one by one.