LAHORE: Jamaat-i-Islami Emir Sirajul Haq has reiterated his demand for across-the-board accountability, while claiming that the so-called anti-corruption drive of the government has “lost credibility among the masses because of its politically motivated agenda”.

Addressing a ceremony here on Sunday, he said a majority of parliamentarians would land in jail if a fair and impartial accountability process started in the country.

He said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) had turned a blind eye towards the corrupt elements in the government. He recalled that majority of the people named in the Panama leaks were part of the three mainstream parties and they considered themselves unanswerable to anyone.

“People have lost trust in the three parties and they are demanding real change,” he claimed, adding that these parties only deceived the poor masses and did nothing for their betterment. Besides the three parties, he said, military dictators played a key role in destruction of the state institutions and economy.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) regime, he said, had proved more destructive than its predecessors. “The PTI, PML-N and PPP are fighting each other only for attaining power and securing their petty interests,” he said, adding that people witnessed their unity in parliament on different issues in the past -- from the extension to army chief’s tenure to Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-related bills.

He claimed that the FATF-related legislation was an attempt to surrender sovereignty of the country and sell the freedom of masses, yet the so-called mainstream opposition and treasury benches demonstrated unity on this “anti-Pakistan” legislation.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2020