LAHORE: Ameer Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Pakistan, Senator Sirajul Haq has said that the Election Commission (EC) had failed to enforce its code of conduct by-election in NA -122 and elections had become a game of the wealthy and the common man could not even dream of contesting elections.

Addressing the participants of the JI central workshop at Mansoora on Sunday, Sirajul Haq said that confidence of the masses in the electoral system had been shaken as was evident from the low turn put in the by-election of NA-122. He said that the EC had failed to implement the recommendations of the Judicial Commission and Reforms Committee of the Parliament.

He said that the remarks of a senior judge of the Supreme Court concerning interest had sent a wave of serious concern among the masses. He said that the country’s constitution accepted the Quran and the Sunnah as the supreme law while the Holy Quran had categorically termed interest as war against Allah and His Prophet (PBUH). As such the court’s remarks had hurt the sentiments of the people.

The JI chief said that Pakistan at present was confronted with foreign as well as internal conspiracies. The pro- west forces were trying to plunge the country, achieved in the name of Islam, into lawlessness.  He said that lakhs of Indian Muslims had not laid down their lives for the continuation of the British law. Pakistan, he said, was the second Islamic state that came into being after the State of Madina, and millions of the people had left their homes and hearths and migrated to this land. However, he said, that during the last 68 years, the Islamic system had not been tried in this country even for a single day. He said that the responsibility of the problems being faced by the country today lay with those who had not implemented the constitution.     

He said that the real issue facing the country was the lack of leadership as the elite currently in power wanted to maintain the status quo and keep the masses as slaves.

The JI chief said that there was no democracy within the ranks of most of the political parties and the JI was the only party that had true democratic set up.