JI threatens to march on Islamabad if demands not met

BANNU: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) provincial chief Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan on Tuesday threatened to march on Peshawar and Islamabad and stage sit-ins if his party’s demands were not fulfilled till December 27.

Speaking at a convention of the Movement for Rights of Southern Districts Council at Milad Park here, he said that the southern districts were replete with natural resources and minerals but the successive governments, including the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, had intentionally kept the area and its people backward.

JI provincial deputy chief Maulana Taslim Iqbal, district chief Prof Ajmal Khan, Abdus Samad Khan, Movement for Rights of Southern Districts Council general secretary Akhtar Ali Shah, former lawmaker Fatehullah Khan Miankhel and others also spoke on the occasion.

Senator Mushtaq said that the federal government was trying to bulldoze the 18th Constitutional Amendment in the garb of the coronavirus pandemic. “The PTI government is violating provincial autonomy by interfering in the affairs of provinces,” he alleged, adding that closure of the educational institutions would not be accepted on the pretext of a second wave of coronavirus pandemic.

Presenting a list of demands to put the southern districts on the track to development and prosperity, the JI senator said that they would start staging sit-ins outside the deputy commissioners’ offices from December 11 followed by a grand public meeting on December 27 in Serai-e-Naurang to press the government for acceptance of demands.

He said that JI Chief Senator Sirajul Haq would address the public meeting. The JI leaders said that all mafias, including sugar, wheat flour and medicines, were part of the PTI-led government.

The last general election, they alleged, were rigged and incompetent and incapable people were given government and now the country and nation were bearing the brunt of those illegal and unconstitutional practices.

He said the PTI government had made life hell for the poor due to rising prices of essential commodities and medicines, inflation and unemployment. He said that a sincere and honest leadership like the JI could steer the country out of the prevailing morass.

Coming down hard on the PTI leadership for reneging on pledges, they said the incumbent government in connivance with the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz did legislation in haste to appease the international lenders and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The country and the nation, they believed, had been mortgaged with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and FATF. They said there was no difference in the incumbent selected rulers and Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid. The JI leaders added that the masses were fed up with the PTI government.