SUKKUR: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said that if Pakistan People’s Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari will contest an election from the Larkana constituency, his [JUI-F] rival will be Maulana Rashid Mehmood Soomro.

He was speaking to the media during his visit to Sukkur on Wednesday.

In reply to a question about the Dec 27 deadline set by Mr Bhutto-Zardari for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to accept his four demands, the JUI-F chief remarked: “Bilawal does not know what is his own date of birth yet he is fixing a date for the [ouster or otherwise of the] government of Pakistan.”

Commenting on Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s act of suddenly ending its boycott of the parliament, the Maulana said it had become [PTI chief] Imran Khan’s habit to take decisions and reverse them. He observed that Mr Khan faced back-to-back failures since his first protest sit-in. It was also his mistake to move the Supreme Court on the Panamagate issue, he added.

“Actually he [Mr Khan] wants to maintain pressure on the government just to escape his own accountability,” said Maulana Rehman, and remarked that Mr Khan was doing nothing but wasting time.

Regarding JUI-F’s reservations over the National Action Plan, he said his party was not at all against the plan but had objection to the implementation of one of its points. By virtue of this particular point, he explained, seminaries were being raided in the name of curbing terrorism and extremism. He argued that it was clearly mentioned in the plan that action would not be taken against seminaries.

Highlighting his party’s role in the promotion of Islam, Maulana Rehman said it always stood for supremacy of Sharia and strongly resisted any legislation that was in conflict with Sharia. “We become part of any government only to see that no law in conflict with Sharia is enacted,” he said, adding that the JUI-F had earlier succeeded in blocking such bills in Punjab and it would sure be able to block the bill currently pending the mandatory consent in Sindh.

Responding to a questioner, the JUI-F chief said the issue of unreliable aircraft in the PIA fleet must be addressed seriously amid media reports that pilots had been expressing their concern over the situation.

Maulana Rehman, who is also chairman of the Special Committee of the Parliament on Kashmir, told a questioner that “India is also a big country of this region and, therefore, it is supposed to behave accordingly”. Unfortunately, he said, New Delhi had adopted an irresponsible attitude.

He repeated Pakistan’s instance that “Kashmir is a political issue and is required to be resolved politically”. The Maulana said India must realise that the dispute could not be settled through military might.

Commenting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anti-Muslim policies, the JUI-F chief observed that the same policies were now creating serious problems for his own government within his country.

Published in Dawn December 15th, 2016