Sirajul Haq warns the govt against imposing further taxes on poor people at the behest of the IMF

LAHORE, Feb 10 (SABAH): Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Emir Sirajul Haq has warned the government against imposing further taxes on poor people at the behest of the IMF.

Addressing the participants of the anti-inflation march on Friday, Sirajul Haq said the poor people would no longer be ready to render sacrifices for the pleasure of the ruling elite. This time, he added, the rulers had to sacrifice their looted money and properties, and if they could not do so, the public was ready to throw them out of power.

The three-day march against the government’s anti-people policies will conclude on Sunday with a mass meeting at Rawalpindi’s Liaqat Bagh. Haq addressed the reception camps at Mansoorah, Shahdrah, Muridke and Kamoki on the first day of the march. The protest march will restart its journey towards the twin city from Gujranwala on the second day on Saturday and conclude at Gujrat, where it will start the final rally.

Sirajul Haq rejected the IMF conditions, ridiculing the ruling PDM and the PPP that if the decisions had to be made by the global lender, what was the logic of the political parties to pose themselves as the rulers of the country. “The unity government of the PDM and the PPP should have handed over the prime minister’s chair to some babu of the IMF.”
He said the incumbent government’s policies were the continuation of the PTI. The trio, he said, was the agent of the status quo as their economic policies revolved around the debt-servicing.

He reminded the PDM and the PPP about their long marches and rallies against inflation as opposition parties, saying both the parties miserably failed to provide any relief to the masses, making life miserable for the common man. He said the people were no longer ready to accept the decisions made behind closed doors. The JI, he said, will fight for the rights of the people and was ready to challenge the politics of the troika (the PTI, the PML-N and the PPP.)

The JI chief called for the holding of the general elections all over the country in one go instead of dividing it on a national and provincial basis. He said the national exchequer could not take the extra burden of billions of rupees in election exercise in parts.