LAHORE, Nov 23: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Syed Munawwar Hasan says the memo scandal has brought disgrace to the country and the armed forces, and the matter cannot be closed simply by making Husain Haqqani a scapegoat.

Addressing participants in a JI central workshop at Mansoora on Wednesday, he said this was a matter of national solidarity and honour and called for a high-level inquiry to expose real culprits and bring them to accountability.

The nation won’t be satisfied with Haqqani’s resignation, he said and added that President Zardari was responsible for all the ills facing the country and the people.

He said Zardari was responsible for price hike, lawlessness, terrorism and unemployment and as long as he was in power neither the masses could have a breath of peace nor the country’s solidarity and sovereignty could be secure.

The JI chief said that in the name of democracy, dictatorship of an individual had been thrust on the country and the dictator cared neither for the constitution nor for the law.

He said PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif had been a friendly opposition of President Zardari for about four years and now he was prolonging Zardari’s rule through his solo “Go Zardari Go” campaign.

He said the country’s electoral system was the hostage of feudal lords, capitalists and vaderas, and there won’t be any change of faces or system as long as the Election Commission was not independent and autonomous.

The media, he said, was under a severe grip of the MQM’s terrorism and fear due to which the nation could not differentiate between its friends and foes.

He said the doors of the JI were open to all but added that only the election alliances founded on national agenda would succeed and not those revolving around personalities.

He said if the next elections did not bring a real change the masses would lose confidence in the election system after which nobody would be able to prevent a revolution.

The JI chief said the people were also raising fingers on the role of the armed forces in whose presence the US was building India as regional policeman and also targeting our citizens by violating our borders. The armed forces were advancing the
enemy’s nefarious agenda by carrying out military operations in different areas, he said.