SUKKUR: Jamaat-i-Islami leaders speaking at various public meetings in Jacobabad, Larkana and Shikarpur on Saturday evening and Sunday slammed the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement for plundering the Sindh exchequer during their five-year rule over the province and vowed to strongly resist their attempts to continue with their spree.

Declaring that leaders of the two parties would be held accountable for every penny plundered by them, JI chief Maulana Sirajul Haq, Mohammed Hussain Mahenti, former MNA Maulana Asadullah Bhutto, Dr Merajul Huda Siddiqui, Abdul Ghaffar Unnar, Nizamuddin Memon, Imdadullah Bijarani, Deedar Lashari and others observed that inflation, lawlessness, bloodshed, unemployment, injustices and other issues had made the life of Sindh people miserable.

The JI chief told the public meeting at DC Chowk in Jacobabad on Saturday night skyrocketing prices of essential commodities had pushed people below the poverty line and the policies pursued by the federal and Sindh governments over the past years had made human life cheaper than food. He stressed the need for an Islamic revolution in the country to find solution to all political, economic and social problems being faced by the nation.

He said that Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had pledged Islamic system to be introduced in Pakistan but more than six decades after its birth, the country was still without the system.

He held the pro-US policies, coupled with corruption, responsible for all ills in society, and said the JI would highlight all problems and propose their solution at the Nov 21 public meeting in Lahore.

He said some (politicians) were talking of division of Sindh but the JI would continue to work for stronger Sindh and Pakistan. He hoped that the people of Sindh would attend the Lahore public meeting in large numbers to join the vigorous campaign for Islamic system to be launched that day at the Minar-i-Pakistan.

“After the Nov 21 meeting, where Sindhi Ajrak will be displayed along with the Pakistan flag, I will visit Balochistan with other members of a jirga to meet dejected Baloch leaders to persuade them to return to the mainstream politics,” he said. The JI chief and his other party colleagues speaking at a public meeting in Larkana on Sunday evening said that the Sindh government had failed to improve law and order and provide proper health and education facilities to the people of the province.

He said the PPP ruled over Sindh for 40 years but the state of affairs even in the home town (Larkana) of its top leadership was quite miserable. He said he witnessed touching scenes at health facilities in this city while small children were seen engaged in labour, instead of going to schools, to support their parents.

“My blood boils and heart burns to see such children repairing punctured two-wheelers on roads,” he said.

Maulana Haq’s speech revolved around a broader form of ‘inequality’ existing in the country which, he said, was evident from the schooling of the children of feudal lords and poor class workers. He said the JI stood for a change but the feudal and elite class was a big hurdle.

He urged the people of Sindh to attend the party’s Nov 21 public meeting in Lahore to decide a future line of action.

Expressing concern over the ever-increasing plague of corruption in the country, he said Rs1,500 billion was siphoned off annually in the country and Rs2,500 billion flown abroad. He said due to corruption by the elite class, the poor masses were burdened with heavy loans being taken from the IMF and World Bank.

Mairaj Huda Siddiqui, Mohammed Hassan Mehnti, Zubair Hafeez Shaikh, Kashif Saeed Shaikh and others also spoke.

At another public meeting held in Shikarpur on Sunday, the JI chief said that his party was going to launch ‘Tehreek-i-Pakistan’ to get people’s fundamental, constitutional and democratic rights restored.

He said once the country was brought under the Islamic rule, poverty, lawlessness, injustice and other issues would no more remain unresolved.

He observed that elected representatives always focused on making money instead of building the nation. Neither the PPP could fulfil its pledge of Roti, Kapra aur Makan nor could the PML-N bring about the economic revolution it had been promising for long during their turn-by-turn rule over the country, he added.

Both the parties must now stop their rhetoric, he said, and urged the masses, specially nationalist groups and religious parties, to help bring the country under the Islamic rule.

In Hyderabad, local JI leaders took out a rally on Sunday for the establishment of a general university as well as medical and engineering colleges within the city.

The rally, led by the party’s Hyderabad university committee, started from the Govt Muslim Science College and ended at the old campus.

Former Sindh University Islamic culture department chairman Dr Ahmed Iqbal, Abdul Waheed Qureshi, Sheikh Shaukat, Inayat Ali Khan, Syed Mushtaq Ali Kazmi and Ahmed Mazhar Ashraf told the participants that Hyderabad, the second largest city of Sindh and the fifth largest of the country, did not have a general university or medical/ engineering college though it had a few such institutions in the past.

They said hundred of thousands of students had to discontinue their education after passing the Intermediate examination.

They noted that colleges were being upgraded and campuses being established in the rural areas but the city was being neglected.

They accused the PPP and MQM of gaining political mileage out of the issue while doing whatever possible to serve their own political interests.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2014