JI holds anti-govt rally in TimergaraBy Shahid Hussain Yousafzai

TIMERGARA: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Senator Sirajul Haq said on Sunday that Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and the political parties in the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) were two sides of the same coin as he said they had the same agenda to appease the US.

Addressing a gathering here, he said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was in the habit of taking U-turns on every issue. He maintained that the skyrocketing inflation and unemployment had made life miserable for the people.

JI provincial chief Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, Member National Assembly (MNA) Abdul Akbar Khan Chitrali, Member Provincial Assembly (MPA) Inayatullah, former MPA and JI Lower Dir chief Aizazul Mulk Afkari and others also addressed the gathering.

Sirajul Haq opposed the introduction of the presidential form of government, saying the country was unable to face more experiments. “The establishment supported the selected ones during the previous general election,” he alleged.

­He said the government was trying to conceal its failures and instead of controlling the spread of Covid-19 it had closed down educational institutions for the second time, which would waste the previous time of the students.

He added that the JI would postpone its anti-government gatherings for two weeks following an appeal from the prime minister and warned that the party would start staging the protest rallies from Punjab if the government did not change its attitude.

The government had damaged the Kashmir cause, but his party would not allow anyone to change the narrative on the Kashmir issue, he added. Speaking on the occasion, JI provincial chief Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan said that there was no writ of the government in the country as law was widely violated by the state institutions.

He said the issue of missing persons all over the country was serious but no-one bothered to resolve it.

Mushtaq Ahmad added that the mandate of his party candidates in Lower Dir was stolen during the 2018 general election. He added that the slogan of change was a ploy to reach the corridors of power. He said that the incumbent government could not provide any relief to the people.

The JI leader said that his party was striving for the establishment of Sharia rule in the country. He alleged that the rulers were least bothered to mitigate the sufferings of the have-nots, who have been exposed to untold miseries. Mushtaq Ahmad said that the people were fed up with the rulers, as they could not deliver on the election pledges.