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Newly-formed party promises equal rights
LAHORE, March 20: The founding conference of the newly-created Workers Party Pakistan which began here on Saturday passed its constitution, promising to give equal rights to people and turn Pakistan into a secular state.
The conference was presided over by a presidium consisting of Abid Hasan Minto, Sufi Abdul Khaliq Baloch, Yousaf Masti Khan and Abdul Latif.
Delegates from all provinces passed the basic document, guiding principles, programme and constitution of the party in addition to the labour and agriculture reports and a document on the provincial autonomy and national question.
The closed session of the party continued till late in the night. It is scheduled to culminate by Sunday afternoon after approving resolutions and electing a new panel of central committee and office bearers. Later, party leadership and leaders from other Left and nationalist groups will speak at an open session.
Participants in Saturdays session expressed their resolve to embrace people from the lower and downtrodden classes. They said this would enable the movement to bring about a change through an organised struggle and full participation of the working people to realise a society free of oppression and exploitation.
According to the adopted programme, the party will endeavour to bring all federating units on a par with each other where they will not be mere administrative units. They will have a full authority to promote their own language, culture and civilisation and full control over their resources and their use in the light of political, social and economic programme of the party.
The state will be transformed into a genuine federal and democratic entity on the lines enumerated by the Quaid-i-Azam in his address to the Constituent Assembly on Aug 11, 1947.
It will be a secular state where every citizen will enjoy equal rights independent of his or her colour, creed, race or gender, and be able to compete for all posts of government and the state. Every citizen will be entitled to a constitutional guarantee of education, healthcare and employment. Feudalism and tribalism will be abolished and agricultural land will be distributed among farmers and tenants.
Trade union laws and rights, including the right to strike and organisation, will be reframed according to the tenets of the ILO and the UN. Agriculture workers will be made part of the labour legislation. A universal instruction system will be introduced and education up to the secondary level will be made free and compulsory. All discriminatory laws against women and minorities will be abolished.
National economy and trade and industry will be rid of the clutches of imperialist pressures. Dependence of the national economy on loans from the world financial institutions will be ceased. Monopoly and comprador capitalism will be done away with and the national industry will be established on modern lines.
Foreign policy will be formulated on lines whereby sovereignty, security and political independence of the country are safeguarded. A policy of regional cooperation will be adopted to establish friendly industrial and trade relations with neighbouring countries.
Access of every citizen to law and justice will be made possible. Effective and comprehensive measures at the national level will be taken to eradicate terrorism and religious extremism. The curricula will be devised on a scientific basis, and it will be purged of all forms of hatred and prejudice.
Pakistans New Left
By Muhammad Ali Siddiqi
The formation last week of a new alliance of progressive parties in Islamabad must arouse interest in us all, irrespective of how we feel about the word Left.
The very fact that such a merger should take place serves to underline the long overdue need for progressive forces to assert themselves and come out of the depression that has been their lot since the collapse of the Soviet system of states in early 1991. To repeat a cliché, there is a role wandering in search of an actor, and the new alliance under the leadership of Abid Hasan Manto seems eager to grab it. The most important point highlighted by Manto was that it was the Islamist forces which had filled the vacuum left unattended by Pakistans demoralised Left.
The issue now is: how does the new party the Workers Party Pakistan (WPP) create space for itself in the situation now obtaining in Pakistan? Is it going to revive the time-worn and hackneyed phrases which have outlived their utility or is it going to come out with something new and original that has a meaning for the people of Pakistan? Just as his New Left in the post-Thatcher era secured Tony Blair three unprecedented terms as Labour prime minister, so too does the WPP have a chance now to craft a new ideology suited to the changed national and international situation.
Some pitfalls must be avoided, the first of them being the temptation to jump on the anti-American bandwagon. Anti-Americanism is not going to get Pakistans New Left anywhere. Denouncing America in a most impressive manner is being done quite adequately by the Islamist forces, which have the support of such men as Oxford graduate Imran Khan and a strategist like Islami Jamhoori Ittihad founder Hameed Gul. Their denunciation of America and the ubiquitous Blackwater, which is to be found in every Pakistanis backyard, may be considered news by sections of an obliging media, but this doesnt serve to highlight much less solve the Pakistani peoples problems, especially their economic misery.
The fate of the now forgotten Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) the clerics six-party alliance is before us. It rode the anti-American wave in the aftermath of the US-led attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and did so well in the 2002 general election that it was able to form government in the NWFP. Once in power, the MMA forgot that it owed something to its voters.
It had the Hasba bill enacted (frozen by the higher judiciary), and it forbade male doctors from attending to women patients, but it never occurred to the MMA leadership that it should build some schools, hospitals, roads, bridges and power stations and draw up economic policies to make a difference to the Frontier peoples dark existence. In fact the Islamist forces in Pakistan have no concept of a modern state and its obligation towards the citizens, and if they have then their priorities do not include it.
The force behind the MMA was the Jamaat-i-Islami. It chose to boycott the 2008 election because it knew the party had no chance at the hustings. For Pakistans New Left there is a lesson in this. Slogan-mongering, wheel-jam strikes and tyre-burnings may demonstrate street power, but that will neither help the WPP in the long term nor solve the problems of the people of Pakistan. Ultimately, as they have demonstrated several times, the people of Pakistan are quite capable of making a difference between substance and rhetoric.
Two, in the past, the leftist parties had shown themselves to be utterly indifferent to Pakistans foreign policy concerns. (We can see this in the behaviour of todays Islamist parties and their supporters in the media.) The WPP should avoid repeating the mistakes of the leftist parties in the past. During the Cold War it made sense for left-leaning parties to oppose Pakistans membership of US-led military alliances. Pakistan, as Henry Kissinger said, was then Americas most allied ally. This meant not only getting economic and military aid from the US, it also opened the floodgates of American investment, with the result that Pakistan saw the birth of a native comprador class which had no stakes in the state of Pakistan or in the welfare of its people.
Today you dont have to be an economic wizard to realise that Pakistans economic problems cannot be solved without the flow of foreign capital and technology. At present investment is taking place only in food franchise outlets and the mobile phone industry. Feudal landholdings must, no doubt, be broken up, as declared by Manto. But one cannot solve the acute unemployment problem without welcoming foreign capital and technology in a big way. Opposing foreign investment now will mean adopting policies and attitudes which have outlived their utility. If the WPP chooses to adopt the Cold War idiom it will have to be re-crafted in a way that makes sense to the people of Pakistan and they see in the New Left a genuine hope for the betterment of their lives.
Three, the WPP should refrain from playing the role of a traditional opposition party which considers it obligatory on its part to oppose every government move. On the contrary there may be moments when the WPP will discover common ground with the two mainstream parties in an atmosphere of uncertainty in which the Taliban are trying to demoralise and weaken state institutions with a view to doing another July 5, 1977.
Four, the New Left should know who the enemy is. Well-funded, armed to the teeth, and with collaborators embedded in the media and civil and military bureaucracy, religious militancy poses the greatest threat to the Pakistani peoples political and cultural freedoms. It is here that the New Left should play its long overdue role and resist any attempt to turn Jinnahs Pakistan into a barbaric theocracy that the very name Ziaul Haq symbolises.
LAHORE, March 20: The founding conference of the newly-created Workers Party Pakistan which began here on Saturday passed its constitution, promising to give equal rights to people and turn Pakistan into a secular state.
The conference was presided over by a presidium consisting of Abid Hasan Minto, Sufi Abdul Khaliq Baloch, Yousaf Masti Khan and Abdul Latif.
Delegates from all provinces passed the basic document, guiding principles, programme and constitution of the party in addition to the labour and agriculture reports and a document on the provincial autonomy and national question.
The closed session of the party continued till late in the night. It is scheduled to culminate by Sunday afternoon after approving resolutions and electing a new panel of central committee and office bearers. Later, party leadership and leaders from other Left and nationalist groups will speak at an open session.
Participants in Saturdays session expressed their resolve to embrace people from the lower and downtrodden classes. They said this would enable the movement to bring about a change through an organised struggle and full participation of the working people to realise a society free of oppression and exploitation.
According to the adopted programme, the party will endeavour to bring all federating units on a par with each other where they will not be mere administrative units. They will have a full authority to promote their own language, culture and civilisation and full control over their resources and their use in the light of political, social and economic programme of the party.
The state will be transformed into a genuine federal and democratic entity on the lines enumerated by the Quaid-i-Azam in his address to the Constituent Assembly on Aug 11, 1947.
It will be a secular state where every citizen will enjoy equal rights independent of his or her colour, creed, race or gender, and be able to compete for all posts of government and the state. Every citizen will be entitled to a constitutional guarantee of education, healthcare and employment. Feudalism and tribalism will be abolished and agricultural land will be distributed among farmers and tenants.
Trade union laws and rights, including the right to strike and organisation, will be reframed according to the tenets of the ILO and the UN. Agriculture workers will be made part of the labour legislation. A universal instruction system will be introduced and education up to the secondary level will be made free and compulsory. All discriminatory laws against women and minorities will be abolished.
National economy and trade and industry will be rid of the clutches of imperialist pressures. Dependence of the national economy on loans from the world financial institutions will be ceased. Monopoly and comprador capitalism will be done away with and the national industry will be established on modern lines.
Foreign policy will be formulated on lines whereby sovereignty, security and political independence of the country are safeguarded. A policy of regional cooperation will be adopted to establish friendly industrial and trade relations with neighbouring countries.
Access of every citizen to law and justice will be made possible. Effective and comprehensive measures at the national level will be taken to eradicate terrorism and religious extremism. The curricula will be devised on a scientific basis, and it will be purged of all forms of hatred and prejudice.
Pakistans New Left
By Muhammad Ali Siddiqi
The formation last week of a new alliance of progressive parties in Islamabad must arouse interest in us all, irrespective of how we feel about the word Left.
The very fact that such a merger should take place serves to underline the long overdue need for progressive forces to assert themselves and come out of the depression that has been their lot since the collapse of the Soviet system of states in early 1991. To repeat a cliché, there is a role wandering in search of an actor, and the new alliance under the leadership of Abid Hasan Manto seems eager to grab it. The most important point highlighted by Manto was that it was the Islamist forces which had filled the vacuum left unattended by Pakistans demoralised Left.
The issue now is: how does the new party the Workers Party Pakistan (WPP) create space for itself in the situation now obtaining in Pakistan? Is it going to revive the time-worn and hackneyed phrases which have outlived their utility or is it going to come out with something new and original that has a meaning for the people of Pakistan? Just as his New Left in the post-Thatcher era secured Tony Blair three unprecedented terms as Labour prime minister, so too does the WPP have a chance now to craft a new ideology suited to the changed national and international situation.
Some pitfalls must be avoided, the first of them being the temptation to jump on the anti-American bandwagon. Anti-Americanism is not going to get Pakistans New Left anywhere. Denouncing America in a most impressive manner is being done quite adequately by the Islamist forces, which have the support of such men as Oxford graduate Imran Khan and a strategist like Islami Jamhoori Ittihad founder Hameed Gul. Their denunciation of America and the ubiquitous Blackwater, which is to be found in every Pakistanis backyard, may be considered news by sections of an obliging media, but this doesnt serve to highlight much less solve the Pakistani peoples problems, especially their economic misery.
The fate of the now forgotten Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) the clerics six-party alliance is before us. It rode the anti-American wave in the aftermath of the US-led attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and did so well in the 2002 general election that it was able to form government in the NWFP. Once in power, the MMA forgot that it owed something to its voters.
It had the Hasba bill enacted (frozen by the higher judiciary), and it forbade male doctors from attending to women patients, but it never occurred to the MMA leadership that it should build some schools, hospitals, roads, bridges and power stations and draw up economic policies to make a difference to the Frontier peoples dark existence. In fact the Islamist forces in Pakistan have no concept of a modern state and its obligation towards the citizens, and if they have then their priorities do not include it.
The force behind the MMA was the Jamaat-i-Islami. It chose to boycott the 2008 election because it knew the party had no chance at the hustings. For Pakistans New Left there is a lesson in this. Slogan-mongering, wheel-jam strikes and tyre-burnings may demonstrate street power, but that will neither help the WPP in the long term nor solve the problems of the people of Pakistan. Ultimately, as they have demonstrated several times, the people of Pakistan are quite capable of making a difference between substance and rhetoric.
Two, in the past, the leftist parties had shown themselves to be utterly indifferent to Pakistans foreign policy concerns. (We can see this in the behaviour of todays Islamist parties and their supporters in the media.) The WPP should avoid repeating the mistakes of the leftist parties in the past. During the Cold War it made sense for left-leaning parties to oppose Pakistans membership of US-led military alliances. Pakistan, as Henry Kissinger said, was then Americas most allied ally. This meant not only getting economic and military aid from the US, it also opened the floodgates of American investment, with the result that Pakistan saw the birth of a native comprador class which had no stakes in the state of Pakistan or in the welfare of its people.
Today you dont have to be an economic wizard to realise that Pakistans economic problems cannot be solved without the flow of foreign capital and technology. At present investment is taking place only in food franchise outlets and the mobile phone industry. Feudal landholdings must, no doubt, be broken up, as declared by Manto. But one cannot solve the acute unemployment problem without welcoming foreign capital and technology in a big way. Opposing foreign investment now will mean adopting policies and attitudes which have outlived their utility. If the WPP chooses to adopt the Cold War idiom it will have to be re-crafted in a way that makes sense to the people of Pakistan and they see in the New Left a genuine hope for the betterment of their lives.
Three, the WPP should refrain from playing the role of a traditional opposition party which considers it obligatory on its part to oppose every government move. On the contrary there may be moments when the WPP will discover common ground with the two mainstream parties in an atmosphere of uncertainty in which the Taliban are trying to demoralise and weaken state institutions with a view to doing another July 5, 1977.
Four, the New Left should know who the enemy is. Well-funded, armed to the teeth, and with collaborators embedded in the media and civil and military bureaucracy, religious militancy poses the greatest threat to the Pakistani peoples political and cultural freedoms. It is here that the New Left should play its long overdue role and resist any attempt to turn Jinnahs Pakistan into a barbaric theocracy that the very name Ziaul Haq symbolises.
