PESHAWAR, April 24: Jamaat-i-Islami Amir Syed Munawar Hasan has said that former rulers pushed innocent people to the fire of terrorism and now they have no right to complain about the security situation in the country.

Addressing a public meeting in the University Town here on Wednesday, he said that thousands of people were killed and displaced during the five years of the PPP-led coalition government.

“The ANP government failed to restore peace in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, rather it tried to appease the United States by giving it the licence to kill people,” he said. The JI leader said that people could not be deceived again by the former rulers because unprecedented price hike, unemployment and lawlessness had made their lives miserable. The rulers did nothing for people’s wellbeing, he added.

He said the US war on terror was actually a war on Muslims and urged the nation to distinguish between friends and foes of Zionist forces.

He said there was a difference between words and deeds of leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party, the Awami National Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Pakistan Muslim League-Q because they did not believe in what they declared as their parties’ manifestos.

He called upon people to vote for JI candidates on May 11 and help his party to enforce Islamic system in the country and overcome the menaces of terrorism, unemployment, poverty, energy crisis and loadshedding.

He said that over the past 65 years more than 1,000 JI leaders had been elected members of the Senate, National Assembly and provincial assemblies, but none of them was found involved in any kind of corruption. Mr Hasan criticised former president Pervez Musharraf and accused him of having killed innocent students of Jamia Hafsa and Akbar Bugti and subverting the constitution.—Bureau Report