KARACHI, Sept 8: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal leaders have said the October elections will determine whether the nation wanted to live as a self-respecting and sovereign entity or stay under the tutelage of the United States robbed of its Islamic identity.

Addressing a public meeting at Nishtar Park on Sunday, the MMA leaders called upon the nation to give their vote to the six-party alliance, so that the fate of those is sealed who had “mortgaged the sovereignty and freedom of the country.”

The public meeting was organised by the MMA on a 24-hour notice to protest against the blocking of their “train march” by arresting their top leaders in Lahore.

In a departure from past practice, the participants were holding only the MMA flags. They gave their leaders a standing ovation as soon as they emerged on stage. A separate enclosure had been erected for women participants.

The meeting adopted a number of resolutions which condemned the US and British bombing on Iraq, and expressed concern over reports that Pakistan’s nuclear installations were to be put under the joint command of US and Pakistani commandos, and on reports of demolition of mosques falling in the Lyari Expressway alignment.

The MMA chief Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani said the religious parties’ conglomerate was not merely an electoral alliance destined to be disbanded after the polls. Rather, it had come to stay and would continue to strive for the enforcement of Islam in the country. The MMA would link the fate of the country with Madina Munawwara instead of the US. He said the MMA, after being voted to power, would turn the country into a “cradle of peace”, free from Kalashnikov culture. It would lighten the country’s debt burden, give women their due rights, and provide the youths job opportunities and a peaceful atmosphere to pursue academic studies.

The MMA Secretary General Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman said the electoral fight this time will be between two distinct forces. On the one side will be those who are bent upon giving away the hard-earned freedom of the country to the infidels, and on the other, those who have raised the flag of freedom and are waging a war for Ummah’s defence.

He said the history was repeating itself. A class of people, who had justified the British rule, had again imposed itself on Pakistan and it wanted to mortgage its future.

He said that whenever an army rule was imposed, the country suffered irreparable loss.

He said the MMA caravan had started its journey to turn the country into a Islamic welfare state.

The Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad said the unity of Ummah was the only solution to the myriad problems it was faced with. In Pakistan, he said, the six religious parties had presented a model of uniting on one platform.

He said the MMA had not given any negative programme. Instead, it had come up with a positive programme based on Islamic Shariat in the form of its manifesto. This was our consensus demand that the recommendations of the Islamic Ideological Council should be enforced. They cover all fields of life — suggesting ways to reform the judiciary, economy, education, police, administration and all the rest.

He said Gen Musharraf was afraid of people and millions were being spent to keep him away from the public. When he comes to Karachi, it appears that the city was under curfew, he added.

Maulana Sami-ul-Haque said the government “cannot stop the MMA from carrying out its struggle for introducing Islamic system in the country.

Allam Sajid Naqvi said the country had been passing through a crisis situation and could only be steered out of it if the nation stood united.