Siraj to lead ‘Ehtisab March’ from Sept 11

LAHORE: Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Senator Sirajul Haq will lead a long march from Lahore to Islamabad titled “Ehtisab March” on September 11, aimed at mobilising public opinion for holding across the board accountability of the present and past political leadership and bureaucracy besides increasing pressure on judiciary to recover billions of plundered public money deposited in foreign banks. 

The march would start from Data Darbar after a public meeting and reach Rawalpindi in two days via GT Road, with Sirajul Haq and other leaders addressing public meetings in all important cities and towns along the way.

This was stated by acting ameer of JI Punjab Javed Kasuri, addressing a press conference on Tuesday along with other leaders, including Bilal Qudrat Butt and Zikrullah Mujahid. 

Kasuri said the JI had constituted various committees to undertake the preparations for holding welcome meetings in all towns along GT Road. He said the JI had been running ‘corruption-free Pakistan’ movement for over a year and after the surfacing of the Panama Leaks, JI’s campaign for making the country corruption-free became the voice of entire nation. He said the historic decision of disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif gave a boost to the JI’s movement and now the party was pressing for holding accountable the remaining 436 influential Pakistanis whose names also appeared in Panama Leaks. 

Apart from Panama Leaks, he said, all those who held Swiss banks accounts, who featured in Dubai Leaks and who had written off loans from banks, should also be subjected to across the board accountability to recover looted public money from them so that it could be spent on providing the usurped basic rights of Pakistani people. He noted that Pakistan stood prominent among corrupt countries of the world and its economy was shaking under huge scandals like, rental power, PIA, Steel Mills, NICL, Haj scam, ephedrine quota, and property scams but not a single culprit was arrested or punished. 

He said the JI had always indicated that the state institutions lacked the required will and sincerity in pursuing the corruption scandals and punishing the criminals because of nepotism, political and other expediencies which resulted into pushing the country in a decadent state of affairs.

Citing a report, Kasuri said the global bodies for watching corruption said 75 percent Pakistanis were forced to bribe the officials for getting their due rights, while police topped the most corrupt of the country’s departments.