Pakistan: Jamaat-i-Islami to hold sit-ins over Panamagate

Jamaat-i-Islami chief Senator Sirajul Haq has announced that sit-ins across Punjab in Pakistan would be held by his party in an attempt to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to present himself and his family members for accountability in the Panama Papers scandal.

Haq said that the first sit-in would be organised in Gujranwala in the second week of next month, followed by similar protests in the divisional headquarters of the province, reports the Dawn.

Haq made these comments while addressing a rally on the Wahdat Road in Lahore.

Haq described the Panamagate as "a tale of corruption carrying the names of Prime Minister's children".

Regretting that the government had wasted six months but neither set up a judicial commission nor initiated any inquiry into the scandal, the Jamaat-i-Islami chief said that he once again urges the Prime Minister to give up intransigence on the matter and get ready for accountability.

He demanded that the "real culprit behind the leak" should be identified and brought to book while referring to a news report about a high-level meeting on security.

Stating that the decision to sack federal information minister Pervaiz Rashid for leaking the information is not acceptable, the senator said that Rashid simply didn't have the guts to take such a drastic step.

Asserting that a tug of war was going on in the federal capital, he said that the Supreme Court has the key to resolve the issue now and urged the court to hear the Panama Papers case on a day-to-day basis so that all those who had "swallowed" the hard-earned money of the masses could be brought to book.