HYDERABAD: Jam-aat-i-Islami (JI) emir Sirajul Haq has claimed that Asif Ali Zardari and Shehbaz Sharif had invited his party to join the ruling coalition, but the Jamaat had declined the offer.

Addressing his party’s youth convention near Station Road late here on Monday night, he demanded that all those who had looted the PIA, Steel Mills and Toshakhana be put in jails.

In a tacit approval of the sentence awarded to former premier Imran Khan, he said that one person was in Attock jail while the rest of the corrupt were still out.

He demanded that the caretaker government should hold free and fair elections in the country in line with the Constitution in order to extricate the country from the political crisis. Elections should be held on time as 240 million people could not be left at the mercy of an ad hoc arrangement, he observed.

Wishing the caretaker PM good luck, he urged him to ensure timely elections in the country. Presently the country was confronting an economic and political crisis, he added.

Lawlessness was also there and bomb blasts were being reported besides kidnapping for ransom cases, he observed.

He said that unemployment and price hike had unnerved the masses. Electricity tariff and prices of petrol and edibles were increasing exponentially. People didn’t have access to quality drinking water, he said.

He stated that 100 million people were living below the poverty line and 70 million youths were awaiting degrees to get employment. Today the nation was facing disappointment and uncertainty on the occasion of 76th Independence Day, he said.

He maintained that 14 parties had increased the problems for people in their one-and-a-half-year rule. He said the coalition government did nothing except for getting its cases quashed. Asif Ali Zardari and Shehbaz Sharif had invited the JI to join the ruling coalition, but the Jamaat stayed away from it, he stated.

He said that that today people were holding rulers responsible for their predicament.

Mr Haq said that poverty was everywhere in Pakistan and that the entire world was progressing, but despite being a nuclear state, Pakistan was not able to provide basic amenities to its people despite the fact that country’s 60pc population was youth and it had 1,000km long coastline and agricultural lands.

He said that conditions in Sindh, where the PPP had been ruling for the last several years, remained unchanged as well. He maintained that the culture of dacoits could not be eliminated in Sindh and the cases of kidnapping for ransom were still taking place. He said the murder of journalist Jan Moh-ammad Mahar was an example, adding that the PPP did not resolve people’s problems.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2023