RAWALPINDI: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Pakistan Ameer J Sirajul Haq has said the incumbent government has presented the worst budget in the country’s history.
While addressing the election convention here on Saturday, he said that the rulers made the poor scapegoats on the verbal assurance of the IMF about the issuance of loans.
Sirajul Haq said that out of the total budget of 14.4 trillion rupees, a whopping seven trillion would be utilized for the payment of interest on loans. The finance minister, he added, had promised to abolish the interest-based economy, but instead, the latter followed the dictations of the IMF, ignoring the decision of the Federal Shariat Court and provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan.
The federal minister, he said, presented no plan for the recovery of the economy in the budget speech. The Fata-merged districts with the KP and Balochistan, where the security situation was alarming, were completely ignored, he said. On the one hand, he said, there was a burden of massive loans, and on the other hand, the government expenses had increased from 450 billion to 765 billion rupees. Instead of imposing heavy taxes in the name of super tax, withholding tax and others, it would have been better if the rulers reduced their expenses and proclaimed self-sufficiency, he said. The cabinet of 85 ministers and advisors, he said, became a liability for the poor nation.
Haq said the government and the judiciary had failed in dispensing justice and establishing across-the-board accountability. He said he had appeared before the Supreme Court and demanded accountability of all 436 people named in the Panama leaks.
Meanwhile, the JI emir has announced countrywide protest demonstrations on Sunday against the PPP’s pre-polls rigging and undemocratic tactics to elect its mayor in Karachi. Haq would address the protest march in the port city. He warned the PPP against the consequences if the ruling party did not mend its way and tried to turn the JI majority into a minority.
