Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Emir Engr Hafiz Naeemur Rehman on Wednesday said that the party has no objection to the creation of administrative units in the provinces within the constitutional framework. Speaking at a press conference at Idara Noor-e-Haq along with Karachi Jamaat-e-Islami chief Monem Zafar, he questioned Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari over election results in Karachi. He also criticized both the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), urging them not to create divisions between the Sindhi and Muhajir communities.
Rehman announced that the party's nationwide shutter-down strike scheduled for September 3 would be historic and that the future course of action would be announced immediately after the strike. He stated that options under consideration included a long march towards Islamabad, sit-ins in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and expanding the protest movement across the country. The Jamaat-e-Islami chief reaffirmed his party's resolve to continue its public campaign against what he described as the extortionate petroleum levy, the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP) mafia, and rising inflation, asserting that the government would have to abolish the levy and cancel anti-people agreements with independent power producers.
He noted that sit-ins in the four provincial capitals had entered their 18th day, while the protest in Peshawar had spread to five locations. He added that the sit-in in Hyderabad had continued for 10 days, with protests also being held in interior districts and remote areas such as Chitral. Public participation in the protests is continuously increasing, he said, adding that traders across the country, including Karachi, had announced unanimous and extraordinary support for the Jamaat-e-Islami's movement and the September 3 strike.
Calling the petroleum levy and payments to IPPs a grave injustice to the public, he appealed to political workers from all parties - whether in government or opposition - to join the movement. Rehman said that the Jamaat-e-Islami's campaign had raised public awareness regarding how governments were burdening ordinary citizens with taxes. He pointed out that the government was collecting around Rs130 per litre in the form of the petroleum levy and other taxes, placing an unfair financial burden on the common man.
Meanwhile, the Sindh High Court Bar Association (SHCBA) and the Karachi Bar Association (KBA) on Wednesday announced a symbolic strike at the courts on Thursday in solidarity with the Jamaat-e-Islami's countrywide shutter-down strike against the petroleum levy. Speaking at a lawyers' convention held at the Jamaat-e-Islami's protest camp outside the Governor House, representatives of the SHCBA and the KBA announced that lawyers would observe a symbolic boycott of court proceedings and march toward the Governor House in the afternoon.