‘Corruption behind terror’

LAHORE

Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Senator Sirajul Haq has termed the rampant corruption the biggest issue eating away the very foundations of the country and said corruption threw the country into the abyss of terrorism.

A political party had been ruling Sindh province for the last four decades but the masses were still living in the stone age there, he said while addressing the teachers and heads of JI-affiliated educational institutions at Mansoora on Saturday.

Sirajul Haq said while the armed terrorists had killed around one hundred thousand Pakistanis during the last one and a half decades, the economic terrorism had crushed the backbone of two hundred million people in the country. He said world’s largest steel mills in Karachi had been made a failure only by corruption and bad governance of the rulers as its staff had not been paid salaries for the last nine months.

Besides, Wapda, PTCL and several banks were also facing financial and administrative difficulties, he added. He also lamented that the Lowari tunnel started in 1976 but had not been completed so far.

He said the country’s youth was disappointed due to the corruption of the rulers who had taken the entire nation hostage. Sirajul Haq recalled that a minister in the US had to sell his house for the treatment of his child but the ruling elite in Pakistan had been squandering away hard-earned money of poor masses on their treatments abroad. He lamented that Panama Leaks case had been continuing for a whole year without any progress which showed the state of affairs in the country. Sirajul Haq said he wished that Supreme Court decision was against the corruption and in the best interest of the masses.

The JI chief said Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution were meant to ensure that corrupt people did not return to the assemblies. He wished that the Election Commission had implemented these articles. He said if the present generation failed to build a corruption-free Pakistan, the coming generation would not forgive them.