Points presented by National Workers Party General Secretary Akhtar Hussain at the Multi-Party Conference in London on 7-8 July 2007
The tragedy of Pakistan is that it has been in perpetual crisis ever since its inception 60 years ago. Resolutions adopted by political parties and alliances during these six decades on the political situation in Pakistan have invariably started with the words: “ Pakistan is going through its gravest ever crisis, Pakistan is facing the most serious crisis in its history” and so on. Can there be an end to this crisis and if so, can we who have assembled here in London today claim to be the ones who can bring that about?
National Workers Party has an agenda for this congregation of Pakistan’s political parties of various democratic denominations to take up and discuss. Our Party would like this Conference to review and discuss the present critical phase in the country’s political history with an open mind.
We need to discuss the on-gong judicial crisis, the worst ever law and order situation prevailing in the country and the rising tide of religious extremism which threatens to destroy all traces of modern civilization and the magnificent achievements of science and technology. We must take cognizance of the misery caused to the masses due to the ever-rising prices of essential commodities and the steadily worsening electricity failure throughout the country, particularly in Karachi, with all its suffocating social consequences. We need to discuss why the State of Pakistan fails to provide timely help to the victims of natural calamities like the rain and flood havoc that has rendered hundreds of thousands homeless in Baluchistan, Sindh and other parts of the country. We must take up the issue of gradual erosion of the nation’s sovereignty, as foreign troops shoot across the borders and kill our citizens with no one to challenge them. The use of brute military force to resolve political issues within the country must also come under our critical scrutiny.
We must also take due note of the fact that the all-pervasive presence of the armed forces in Pakistan’s politics, industry, commerce and in the entire process of governance, coupled with the continued existence of the oppressive feudal system, is the root cause of all the social, economic and political ills the country is facing today, including the total subversion of democratic values and institutions.
A Brief Look into the Past
Before we proceed to deal with the future, we must take a brief look into the recent if not distant past so that we have a clear vision of what is happening today and why. This discourse can be a little boring but kindly bear with us for the sake of Pakistan and its people whom we claim to represent here today.
The tremendous changes at global level witnessed during the second half of 1980s and in the 1990s led to the dismantling of the socialist bloc, which in turn helped the developed western countries to project capitalist market economy as the panacea of all economic and social ills faced by mankind. Globalisation and New World Order are links in this chain. Naturally, these developments had a very deep negative effect on people’s emancipation movements everywhere, particularly those in the poor under-developed countries.
Nevertheless, within the short span of a few years, it has become crystal clear that the so-called New World Order and capitalist Globalisation are nothing but a means to facilitate the neo-imperialist expansion of developed industrial giants headed by the United States. Their main objective is to maintain a stranglehold on the economies of the third world countries and seize control of their natural resources, particularly the energy resources.
At the same time, there is also a running conflict of interest among the developed capitalist countries but in their common bid to secure the rest of the world as their market, all of them unanimously accept the United States as their leader. In spite of the end of the cold war and the collapse of the socialist bloc and its alternate economic system, capitalist countries especially the United States have not dismantled the NATO; there has been no let-up in weapons production and sales; the nuclear weapon stockpiles have not been destroyed, nor has the global network of military bases been wound up. This situation has given birth to a new movement across the world including the developed nations, a movement that is opposed to the anti-people Globalisation policy being executed through World Bank, IMF and WTO and is also against the policy of aggression and occupation of other countries by America and its western collaborators, so nakedly demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The September 2001 terrorist attack on the New York Trade Centre provided the United States with a pretext to turn more aggressive and arrogant towards the third world countries. Pakistan happens to be a direct target of this policy. It is no secret that successive governments in Pakistan, and in particular its armed forces, have from day one been closely associated with US policies and interests in the region and have taken pride in their subservient relationship with the US. With promptings from America, Pakistan’s rulers and their secret agencies have for many years sponsored, nursed and patronized reactionary religious forces and their violence-prone fundamentalist ideologies, so much so that today these elements are pushing their agenda of forcible talibanisation in many areas of the country and openly challenging the state of Pakistan.
The great somersault through which our rulers have crossed the floor to embrace liberalism, moderation and enlightenment is a part of the same old opportunistic tactic, which they have always used to win American and Western support for securing their control of power. One cannot even think of genuine democratic politics and an enlightened society in Pakistan in the presence of a backward, undemocratic, feudal-dominated system and more so when we have an outdated education system with an abysmally low level of scientific and technological development, no matter what the official propaganda wants the world to believe. On top of it all, the major part of our economy - trade, industry, transport, construction - and most of the higher posts in the government are in the hands of men of the armed forces.
A New Kind of Politics Needed
Obviously the situation calls for a new kind of politics, one that stands for social change based on the abolition of feudalism and the creation of an industrially developed Pakistan, in which equal rights of all citizens shall be guaranteed without any discrimination, a Pakistan in which all branches of the bureaucracy – civil and military – shall be made subordinate and answerable to elected democratic institutions. It shall be a genuine democratic federation, based on equal participation of all the constituent nationalities with guaranteed right over all their resources. This is not an impossible task today.
Take a look at Latin America, where national rights of the people had been jackbooted by the United States for decades. In recent years, they have fought bravely and to a great extent successfully to free their countries from American domination and rescue their resources from exploitation by American monopolies. Inspired by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, pro-people leaderships have emerged in several other Latin American states to carry on the fight once pioneered by Fidel Castro in Cuba. In landlocked Nepal, perhaps one of the most backward countries of the world, people’s sustained struggle has at last triumphed over the long tyrannical rule of an oppressive monarchy. They have almost cast the monarchy away and are engaged in the struggle to construct a new modern democratic Nepal.
The on-going lawyers’ struggle for independence of judiciary deserves our special attention. All the talk about justice for the people, particularly for those who cannot afford the high cost of lengthy court proceedings, is meaningless until and unless the judiciary is totally free and independent of all forms of external interference and influence. The struggle for independence of judiciary has been long overdue. Our Party, while expressing our full solidarity with the lawyers, does not look at their struggle as an isolated phenomenon. It should be related to various other struggles going on in the country - the struggle for a free and independent media, for an independent election commission, independence of the parliament and other national institutions and so on. Deep-going social changes are needed to ensure such independence.
It is our considered view that all the progressive democratic and secular forces in the country need to take a common position around the following people’s agenda, without which neither genuine democracy, nor independence of judiciary and other vital institutions of the state can be secured.
Immediate Steps
1. Unconditional withdrawal of the Presidential Reference against the Chief Justice of Pakistan;
2. Appointment of an independent election commission acceptable to all political parties, in order to ensure free, fair and impartial elections;
3. Ensure that General Musharraf gives up his position as army chief immediately;
4. Unrestricted freedom for the press and electronic media and firm guarantees for the security of life of working journalists;
5. A dignified and independent foreign policy based on Pakistan’s national interests rather than the imperialist interests of the United States;
6. Immediate end to military operation in Baluchistan, release of detained citizens and recovery and release of missing citizens, followed by the opening of negotiations with political parties representing the people of Baluchistan for restitution of their legitimate political, economic and constitutional rights as an equal partner in the Federation of Pakistan. Simultaneous steps to introduce appropriate amendments in the constitution to ensure the inalienable right of the federating units/nationalities over their natural resources;
7. Further measures to ensure equal rights for women and minorities in all spheres of national life including adequate representation in all elected forums;
8. Abolition of all anti-labour laws including the widely condemned IRO 2002 and the provisions in the Finance Bill, raising working hours from 8 to 12 hours and forcing a series of other harsh conditions on workers including female workers; unrestricted right of association and formation trade unions for all categories of workers including agricultural workers.
Intermediate Steps
1. Concrete steps to introduce meaningful land reforms that would
release the rural masses from feudal bondage and help improve
the quality of their lives;
2. Abolition of all kinds of absentee land holdings including lands gifted to retired and serving military and civil bureaucrats, and distribution of all such lands among the landless peasants;
3. Stop all future land allotments to serving and retired military officers;
4. Stop the creation of new Defence Housing schemes and conversion of military lands meant for operational or logistical purposes into Defence Housing Societies and making allotments therein to individuals;
5. All industrial and commercial enterprises run by various Foundations of the armed forces be subjected to strict observance of the country’s labour and taxation laws and made accountable like similar enterprises run by civilian companies;
6. A sustained campaign against the forces of religious bigotry and extremism to force the authorities to take stern measures to stop the on-going process of talibanisation of Pakistani society;
7. Radical reduction in military expenditure and diversion of the resources thus saved towards education, health and provision of basic amenities to the masses.
8. Sincere effort to resolve the conflict with India, so that the countries of South Asia are able to set about the task of transforming SAARC into a strong regional economic forum aimed at serving the best interests of the poverty-stricken masses of South Asia and capable of resisting the machinations of World Bank, IMF, WTO and the multinational corporations.
