Siraj wants speedy trials in graft cases

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Senator Sirajul Haq on Tuesday said accountability courts should conduct speedy trials in corruption cases and announce punishments so that the situation could become clear.

Addressing the participants of the JI central workshop at Mansoora, Sirajul Haq said the ousted prime minister was trying to make the courts a party to his ouster. He said rulers were complaining about masses not getting justice, educational institutions without education and hospitals without heath facilities. However, rulers were not ready to admit that they themselves were responsible for poverty, illiteracy, injustice, lawlessness and unemployment in the country.

He said if former ruling parties over the last three to four decades were talking of masses’ problems, they must admit they themselves were to be blamed for all this. Sirajul Haq said the government wanted to become a political martyr but this time, its desire might not be fulfilled. He said the technocrats government was merely a presumption and was being talked about by the government circles from time to time with the desire to achieve political martyrdom.

He said election commission would have to ensure electoral reforms before 2018 elections and all those who had been named in Panama Leaks, those who had devoured huge bank loans or availed any NRO must not be allowed to contest elections.

He said the path of the cheats and plunderers to the assemblies would have to be blocked in order to hold fair and free elections and honest governments in future. He said as long as elections remained the game of billionaires, an honest middle class man could not think of contesting what to talk of winning the election.

Meanwhile, JI Secretary General Liaqat Baloch, while addressing party delegations at Mansoora flayed prime minister for delivering election speeches in public meetings which, he said, was hurting the image of his high office. He said it was true that political issues were decided in the elections instead of courts. However, he said, those ruling the country in the name of democracy should not destroy the Constitution, the law and the democratic norms. He said if general public was deprived of clean drinking water and basic facilities of education and health, the courts remained the only forum of redress. Liaqat Baloch said all the formalities for full activation of MMA would be completed during the current month and its component parties would announce a common line of action.