Daily Times

LAHORE: Jamaat e Islami Ameer Senator Sirajul Haq has made an impassioned appeal to the Supreme Court not to disappoint the nation in respect of the accountability of the ruling elite otherwise the country could plunge in anarchy and civil war.

Speaking at a reception hosted by the Lahore Tax Bar in his honour on Wednesday, he said that the corrupt ruling elite had always been above the law and the constitution and had never been brought to accountability. He said the masses once again had the feeling that some Doctrine of Necessity might be opened for the rulers this time again.

“I would appeal to the Supreme Court a thousand times, not to disappoint the nation, because if the masses got disappointed this time again, the country might plunge into anarchy and civil war,” he said. He said the judiciary would have to bring the plunderers to the dock in order to prove its existence and supremacy. He said the elite had been ruling the country for the last seventy years. Whenever one of them was about to fall in the net, all others rushed to save him.

The JI chief said that the Panama leaks was not a political case, it was an issue of national security and survival of the country. The ruling clique was burdening the country by unfair taxes. The owner of eighteen mills paid the same tax as that a common labourer did, he said.

He said that those mentioned in the Panama leaks or those getting bank loans waved off must be brought to accountability whether they were in government or the opposition. Sirajul Haq said that according to an international survey, around five million people in the country were taxable but only 1,200,000 people were paying direct taxes. This was because people did not trust the rulers or the taxation department. He said that the rulers did not pay taxes or utility bills themselves nor did government agencies collect utilities bills from the mills/factory owners. The entire taxation system was flawed and must be revamped. He said that around 1.4 million people in the county were suffering from cancer and twenty million children were away from school. The poor were forced to send their small children to odd jobs to supplement family income.

Expressing complete solidarity with the armed forces against continued Indian aggression, Sirajul Haq said that India was firing bullets on this country bought with the money earned through trade with Pakistan. He demanded of the rulers to end trade losses with India and urged the nation to rise against the enemy next door.

He said the JI Sindh convention being held at Karachi on Nov 26 and 27 would be a messenger of good news for the poor and workers against the forces of exploitation and injustice.