HYDERABAD, July 19: The secretary-general of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro, who is also the provincial secretary general of the JUI(F), has demanded that the chief election commissioner should be removed without delay as he has lost the confidence of the nation and some impartial chief election commissioner should be appointed.
He further demanded that the ministers should also be removed and a national government comprising the representatives of political and religious parties should be appointed to supervise the general election.
He was speaking at a press conference at the Madressah Shams-ul-Uloom on Thursday.
He announced that the JUI and other religious parties will contest the general election from the platform of the MMA and expressed confidence that the results will be quite different this time.
He said the religious parties will resist any attempt to convert Pakistan into a secular state as it is an ideological state which was created in the name of Islam and millions of Muslims had sacrificed their lives for the creation of this Islamic state.
He said the MMA will promote love, peace and tolerance, and eliminate religious hatred.
He appealed to the people of Pakistan to raise slogans of “wake up Muslims” instead of the slogans of “wake up Punjabis”, “wake up Sindhis”, “wake up Mohajirs”, “wake up Seraikis”, etc.
He said when the non-Muslim world has united to exterminate the Muslims, the Muslim Ummah should also discard its petty differences and stand like a rock to challenge the enemies of Islam.
Commenting on the death sentence awarded to Sheikh Omer by the Anti-Terrorism Court, Hyderabad, Dr Soomro said that the Ulema believed that the rulers had directly interfered in the case.
He said President Pervez Musharraf had already announced that Shaikh Omer will be sentenced to death.
The secretary general, MMA, claimed that in the eyes of the rulers every person who kept a beard and wore a turban was a terrorist.
He said all this was being done to appease America, and added that none of the Al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders were present in Pakistan.
He said the American agents were spreading these rumours to target Pakistan just like they did in Afghanistan.
He said the rulers of Pakistan had surrendered before the Zionist forces and for all practical purposes Pakistan had been converted into an American colony where the representatives of the FBI were establishing their bases everywhere.
The JUI leader said India and Israel will leave no stone unturned to destroy the nuclear installations in Pakistan because throughout the Muslim world Pakistan alone possessed nuclear weapons.
He said that the JUI had finalized a list of its candidates, and added that a meeting of the provincial general council of the MMA will be convened on August 1 where each component of the MMA will present a list of its candidates.
He said the MMA leaders will select joint candidates to contest the general election.
He claimed that the MMA believed in democratic struggle and it wanted to convert Pakistan into a real democratic and religious social welfare state.
He appealed to the people to support the Ulema and vote for the MMA candidates in the coming election.
Maulana Abdul Qayoom Hjalejavi, Maulana Taj M. Nahyoon, Mir Murtaza Khoso, and Engineer Javed Anwar Channa were also present on the occasion.
