Religious leaders term cabinet reshuffle an eyewash

LAHORE:Religious leaders on Tuesday said mere reshuffling of key ministers involved in corruption amounts to duping the nation in the name of accountability, demanding that the culprits must be sacked, booked under NAB laws and arrested immediately to prevent them from influencing the investigations.

Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Senator Sirajul Haq said mere reshuffle in cabinet was not a punishment but an eye-wash and actually amounts to providing the corrupt new opportunities to loot and plunder the public exchequer.

Talking to The News, he said, it was a test for Prime Minister Imran Khan to punish them exemplarily as he had been promising the nation for the last 10 years, but he had badly failed in the test. Siraj demanded that all the ministers, party leaders, the bureaucrats who formulated and implemented the ministers’ policies, were equally guilty and should be booked under NAB cases. Most importantly, the cabinet headed by the prime minister approved the subsidies, so he could not absolve himself as the main culprit. Siraj demanded that all the plundered money should be immediately recovered from them before they transfer it to other accounts, and should be spent on corona relief fund.

JUI-F central spokesman and former Senator, Hafiz Hussain Ahmad said though the change of portfolios was no punishment, yet it proved they were the culprits and Imran Khan had taken another U-turn by sparing them and allowing them to commit more corruption in new ministries.

Talking to The News, he said, reshuffling of ministers proved that the FIA report was correct, but Imran Khan had taken the same action for which he had been accusing Nawaz Sharif for the last 10 years. He said the nation has seen the standards of justice which PTI did with its own corrupt ministers, adding that Imran was sparing the accused since any action against them would demand his own accountability as the chief executive of the country who approved the recommendations of the ministries of the corrupt ministers. He demanded that all those involved in the scam should be booked under NAB and jailed immediately. He said Imran Khan had earlier spared a minister involved in billions of rupees corruption in drug pricing and playing havoc with the lives of poor citizens, by just removing him from the ministry without giving any punishment.

Hafiz Hussain Ahmad warned that Imran Khan was tightening the grip of non-representative persons over the elected parliament, and appointing a non-elected Babar Awan as adviser on parliamentary affairs was an open insult to the institution of parliament and millions of voters of the country.

Jamiat Ahle Hadith president, Senator Sajid Mir alleged the PM had set new standards of nepotism by covering up the massive corruption of his cronies, despite that he had been loudly accusing the previous regimes of corruption. Talking to The News, he said it was time Imran Khan should have rid the nation of all the corrupt sitting in the ranks of his party and government, and award them exemplary punishments like he had been promising the nation. He demanded that all the corrupt ministers should be sacked, booked under NAB and arrested so that they could not influence the investigation process.

President of Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) and leader of Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadith (MJAH) Allama Zubair Ahmad Zaheer said by exonerating the ministers and party leaders proved to have plundered billions of public money through organised corruption, Prime Minister proved himself as worse than his predecessors who had been looting public money without raising slogans of Riasat-e-Medina.

Talking to The News, he said, the prime minister has actually hoodwinked the masses by just changing their ministries, adding that if it was the punishment then Imran Khan should change his own status since he was the one who had approved all the corrupt practices and

policies those ministers had been making. He said the PTI leadership had laid itself totally exposed as equally corrupt like its predecessors whom Imran had been accusing of massive corruption over the last 20 years.

JUP vice-president Qari Zawwar Bahadur said without lodging NAB cases and removing the ministers involved in corruption, how could the PM justify that he was different from his predecessors whom he had been accusing of plundering national exchequer.

He said Imran Khan proved he was following the footsteps of the previous rulers whom he had never tired of accusing of plundering public money through such tactics which were employed by the ministers of his own cabinet now. He said the nation would never consider it a punishment until Imran sacked the accused ministers, arrest them and start investigations by NAB.