QUETTA, May 18: Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman has claimed that the MMA’s principled politics and democratic character were main factors behind its emergence as a major parliamentary power. Speaking at a public meeting in Kharan on Wednesday, he asked the electorate of NA-271 (Kharan-Panjgur) to repose trust in the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal by voting again for its candidate in the by-election on May 28.
Maulana Abdul Shakoor Kharani presided over the meeting in which MNAs Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani and Maulana Noor Mohammad and the MMA candidate, Hafiz Mohammad Azam, also spoke.
The opposition leader said that the MMA’s victory in the general election 2002 was the result of its stand against the military dictatorship in the country and American aggression against Afghanistan.
Criticizing President Musharraf, he said that the MMA had ‘backed the 17th constitutional amendment to give a chance to army to give up its political role’ but the military ruler had gone back on the commitment he had made with the alliance and it had pushed the country to political uncertainty.
Maulana Rehman further said that main objective of the MMA was to strive for enforcement of Islamic system in the country through constitutional and political ways.
He said that the MMA had never tried to ‘monopolize’ Islam but no one could deny that it was untiring struggle of the religious parties that had forced the parliamentarians to include Islamic clauses in 1973 Constitution.
He said that the alliance would neither accept the military ruler’s simultaneously holding of two posts of the president and chief of army staff nor compromise over constitutional and democratic rights of the people.
He held President Musharraf equally responsible for atrocities committed by the US forces against Afghans and said that America would not succeed in suppressing resistance movements in Afghanistan and Iraq. He predicted that Iraqis and Afghans would at last succeed in liberating their motherlands.
Maulana Rehman reiterated that the MMA was the only political force in the country to publicly denounce massacre of innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He strongly condemned sacrilege of Holy Quran by the US interrogators in Guantanamo Bay prison and expressed the hope that Muslim Ummat, on the call of the MMA, would observe protest on May 27 to condemn desecration of the holy book.