Pakistan

There is immense euphoria mainly in the Pakistani media, the political superstructure, “civil society” and the political outfits serving as umbrella organisations for diverse NGO’s on the appointment of Dr. Abdul Maalik as the chief minister of Baluchistan by Nawaz Sharif. What lies behind this euphoria?

Although the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) bagged more seats in the May 2013 election compared to the 1997 elections the impact of last month’s defeat is far greater. This undoubtedly will have profound repercussions as PPP activists may succumb to pessimism. Questions over the PPP’s future haunt its supporters. The chattering classes are incestuously debating the PPP defeat, albeit superficially.

Most of the elitist actors at the helm of the political edifice personify the social, moral, ethical, and cultural decay through which the country is passing presently

The WAPDA workers union, the largest organized force in Pakistan is have a referendum in two days. The comrades of the PTUDC are intervening in the referendum with a revolutionary programme. Here we provide our readers with the English translation of their main leaflet. WAPDA  - Water & Power Distribution Authority – is a key department in Pakistan, responsible for the generation, transmission and distribution of Power in whole country.

The repolling at four polling stations in South Waziristan was blatantly rigged. Ali Wazir the Marxist candidate for Parliament had his victory stolen. But while the Parliament is the final goal for corrupt career politicians, for the Marxists the campaign was just a step in the struggle against the rotten Capitalist system.

Since the Pakistani general elections on 11 May this year, the forces of reaction have been manoeuvring to try to deny a democratically elected candidate his rightful place as an elected representative of the people of Pakistan. Tomorrow is an important day in this process as it will witness these reactionary forces doing everything they can to steal the victory of the Marxists.

The PML-N government will find itself in quicksand with so many adversaries fighting in so many directions on so many fronts

Pakistan is a country that is literally falling apart in every sense of these words. Its already weak infrastructure is in a state of decay, with power shortages, water shortages, a transport system in a state of collapse, unemployment ever rising and with widespread poverty. This generalised state of decay is now eating away at the state itself, with national and religious conflicts widespread. The ruling elite see no other way of holding on to power than to provoke division after division among the people in the hope of weakening the impoverished masses. It is within this nightmare situation that the Pakistani Marxists are building a force that can offer the masses a way out.

The campaign for the 2013 elections is perhaps the worst ever from the point of view of the oppressed classes of this country. There is hardly any party that addresses the most burning issue in society – the class contradiction and exploitation. Not even a single mainstream party claims to be a ‘party of the poor’.

On the morning of Monday, 22 April, police attacked the protest camp of Unilever workers outside the factory gate in Rahim Yar Khan. Nine were arrested and tortured. They had been protesting for their reinstatement for the last nine days, a struggle that has been ongoing for the past few years.

There are many forgotten heroes of the Liberation movement against the British Raj in the Subcontinent. Bhagat Singh and his comrades were some of those who stood against imperialism on a programme of Socialist Revolution. On 23rd March 1931, Bhagat Singh along with his comrades Raj Guru and Sukh Dev were hanged by British Imperialism at the Central Jail in Lahore.

We bring to the attention of our readers an article written in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn about Malala Yousufzai and the work of the Marxists in the Swat area in Pakistan.

Pakistan Post Office Directorate General Employees Union elections were held on 11 March 2013. The revolutionary group of PTUDC comrades won a landslide victory and got 70% of the votes.

On the 23rd of March 1931, twenty-three year old Bhagat Singh, the legendary revolutionary icon in the struggle for liberation and emancipation of the masses in the Indian subcontinent and his comrades in arms, Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru, were hanged at Lahore’s central jail.

The arson and burning down of 178 houses in the night of 8th and 9th March in Joseph Colony, a Christian neighbourhood near Badami Bagh, in the heart of Lahore is yet another fanatical incident that reflects the malaise afflicting the Pakistani society. A vigilante mob carried out this act of savagery on the pretext of allegedly blasphemous remarks made by a Christian youth in a drunken fracas with a Muslim friend.

The political debate in the ruling elite is shrouded with the issue of corruption. It is dubbed as the most serious threat to the system and eradication of this menace is being portrayed as the recipe for the social and economic salvation of this country.

Unilever is extracting huge profits in Pakistan through brutal exploitation of workers. Most of the products of Unilever are now manufactured through Third Party contracts in which workers are given starvation wages and no other benefits at all.

There has been an aggressive campaign in the media that the recipe for growth and the solution to the economic crisis is privatisation and not the nationalisation of industry, agriculture, finance capital and the economy. Nationalisation has been dubbed as a failure and an economic disaster.