JI, JUI-F discuss MMA-like alliance

LAHORE: Senate Deputy Chairman and JUI-F Secretary General Maulana Abdul Ghaafoor Haidari called on Jamaat-e-Islami Secretary General Liaqat Baloch at his residence on Friday and discussed possibilities of establishing an alliance of religious parties like the defunct Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) to counter “conspiracies to secularise the country and suppress Islamist elements.”
Maulana Haidri expressed his concern over continuing raids on mosques, seminaries and arrests of Ulema and students in the name of the war against terror and the National Action Plan.
He said he was trying to convene a meeting of religious parties to chalk out a joint strategy on the issue and to move ahead for establishing a political alliance of Islamist parties.
Liaqat Baloch alleged the government was making serious efforts to deviate from the ideology of Pakistan and the Islamic objectives for which the country was established.
He warned that religious parties would not allow anyone to succeed in the anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan objective. He said a tiny secular lobby in the country was making conspiracies against Islamic laws and values in the country and Islamic Articles of the Constitution of Pakistan. He said religious parties had decided to call a joint meeting on the issue very soon.
He condemned a murder attack on MQM leader Rashid Godel and said it was a conspiracy to detract the National Action Plan going against terrorism. He said religious parties condemned all forms of terrorism and had been demanding that terrorists working under any garb and name must be crushed.
Meanwhile, Liaqat Baloch visited a sit-in of peasants and cultivators outside the Punjab Assembly and demanded the government accept their genuine demands. Addressing the media, he said the rulers had ruined country’s agriculture, industry and trade and growers were not getting the due price for their crops.
He said if TCP could purchase sugar from sugar mills owners, why it could not purchase over half a million ton rice in different godowns. He urged the government to see reason and resolve the problems of the faring community.