GUJRANWALA: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has announced a long march on Islamabad on September 20 against the petroleum levy, with party chief Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman warning that JI will launch a movement to bring down the government if the charge is not withdrawn.
Announcing the date at a public gathering in Gujranwala, Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman said the prime minister should read the public mood and provide immediate relief. If the levy was not ended, he said, the party would begin a movement to topple the government.
“The government has only one option, and that is the abolition of the levy,” the JI chief said. “If the levy tax is not withdrawn, the decision will be made on the streets of Islamabad.”
He said a sea of hundreds of thousands of people would long march towards Islamabad and would enter the capital from all four sides.
“We have come out for the rights of 250 million people,” Hafiz Naeem said, adding that the government had told the party it was helpless and could not bring petrol prices down.
September 20 falls on a Sunday. The announcement sets a firm deadline on a dispute that had been running on rolling ultimatums since August, and it comes a day after the government asked JI for three more days before any long march call was issued.
The announcement followed a round of talks between a JI delegation and a senior government team at Punjab House, where, according to sources, the government asked the party not to issue a long march call for three more days.
The JI delegation was led by the party’s naib ameer, Liaqat Baloch. The government side was headed by Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal and included Rana Sanaullah, Federal Minister for Petroleum Ali Pervaiz Malik and Bilal Azhar Kayani.
The talks follow proposals and recommendations on petroleum prices that a JI delegation, also led by Liaqat Baloch, presented to the government on September 7.
Hafiz Naeem said two rounds of talks had been held between the party’s committee and the government. “The government repeatedly asks for time so it can consult its departments. In practice, it has no answer to our team,” he said. He added that Liaqat Baloch had informed him the government committee wanted more time, “but we told them the decision has been taken — we have to march on Islamabad.”
The JI chief accused the government of dropping a “petrol bomb” on the public and of using the international market as an excuse to keep domestic fuel prices high.
“The government says the oil we buy comes from the UAE, and UAE oil is costing $110 a barrel. We say prices are one thing — why are you collecting levy bhatta [extortion]?” he said, using the term the party has adopted for the charge throughout its campaign.
He claimed JI had laid bare the details of the levy before the government and the media, and that ministers had responded by asking how they would run the government without it. “Students, farmers, labourers, teachers — no one has been spared,” he said, arguing that every increase in petrol prices pushes up the price of everything else. The party has repeatedly cited back-to-back fuel price increases this month to press its case.
Hafiz Naeem also targeted the Punjab government, alleging that 11,000 public schools in the province had been “sold” and that 52 percent of students had failed in the ninth grade. He accused the provincial government of setting up a handful of schools named after former prime minister Nawaz Sharif for publicity.
His ninth-grade claim follows the Lahore board’s 9th class results, which showed a pass rate of 46.51 percent. The provincial government has presented its programme of handing the management of under-performing public schools to private operators as a reform to improve enrolment and results.
“Scientists, experts and top professionals once studied in government schools. Today nobody sends their children to public schools for quality education,” the JI chief said, adding that the Sharif family had been in power for 40 years while Punjab’s farmers struggled.
In Rawalpindi, JI’s sit-in against petroleum prices at Liaquat Bagh Chowk continued for a second day, with the party’s local leadership and workers in attendance.
JI Punjab ameer Dr Tariq Saleem told the gathering that the rulers demanded sacrifices from the people but were not prepared to cut their own expenses and privileges. He alleged that the coalition government had turned petroleum products and electricity and gas bills into a source of earnings, and said sit-ins had been under way in 32 cities for 25 days and would be widened further.
He described the purchase of an aircraft worth Rs11 billion and a vehicle costing crores of rupees as rubbing salt into the public’s wounds, and said the government should cut perks, protocol and official spending if it genuinely wanted to repair the economy.
JI naib ameer Mian Muhammad Aslam called the petroleum levy an “oppressive extortion tax” and demanded that it be withdrawn immediately. If it was not, he warned, the protest would turn into a movement to topple the government. He said costlier petrol raised the price of transport, food, farming inputs and daily essentials, leaving poor households unable to meet the cost of schooling, treatment, electricity and rations.
The petroleum levy is a fixed per-litre charge that the federal government collects on petrol and diesel on top of the product price. It has become one of Islamabad’s largest sources of non-tax revenue and a central element of fiscal targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund, which is why successive governments have resisted calls to cut it. The government’s negotiators, according to Hafiz Naeem’s own account, have argued that consultations with the relevant ministries are needed before any response.
JI has escalated its campaign step by step since August — from a three-stage protest plan in Lahore and expansion of sit-ins to Hyderabad and Balochistan, to a nationwide strike on September 3 and a Mall Road sit-in that entered its 24th day on September 8. Earlier this week, Liaqat Baloch said tensions around the Strait of Hormuz were no excuse for the levy.
At the sit-in a day before the Gujranwala announcement, Hafiz Naeem said JI was a disciplined party whose workers were sitting peacefully on the leadership’s instructions, and that turnout was rising. “Are you ready for the Islamabad call?” he asked the crowd. “Seeing your passion, I feel like announcing the march on Islamabad right now.”
That call has now been made. With petrol selling at Rs367.75 a litre and the levy locked into revenue targets agreed with the IMF, the government has eight days to decide whether to move on the charge or prepare for a march on the capital.
The government had not issued a formal response to the September 20 announcement at the time of publication.