LAHORE: The Supreme Court can play an important role in pulling the country out of the present crisis and the whole nation is looking towards it, says Jamaat-iIslami emir Sirajul Haq.

Talking to different delegations at Mansoora on Monday, he said if the judiciary had timely decided all the issues, the masses would not have felt the need to take to the street.

He said the record of all those who had got their loans written off was with the banks and financial institutions.

Mr Haq counselled the government to immediately open the roadsfor the public. The right to protest could not be taken away from any one and masses would not tolerate for long those who tried to snatch their right, he added.

The JI chief deplored the arrests of political workers.

He said the job of the rulers was to open the roads and streets and not to close them.

He said the Panama leakshad become the bone of contention because the rulers were not ready to set up an independent judicial commission for enquiry during the last six months. Had the rulers been clean, they would not have hesitated to set up such a commission, he added.

Sirajul Haq said it was the JI that had started the drive against corruption first of all and it would carry it to its logical end. He said it was painful to see the detail of the assets of the members of the National Assembly, the ministers and advisors as it appeared that most of them were so poor that they deserved charity. He said in the past, the nation had tried feudal lords, generals and capitalists but none of them had been able to steer the nation out of troubled waters. Instead, all of them had created more problems for the masses.

The JI emir said the rulers had failed to safeguard the territorial as well as ideological borders of the country which was split into two due to their follies. He said that racialism, ethnicity and regionalism were being promoted and the nation must be on guard against baser human instincts and elect honest and patriotic leadership.