Shift focus to people-centric politics in electoral arena, urges AWP dialogue

ISLAMABAD: Speakers at a conference organised by the Awami Workers Party (AWP) on Friday called for shedding a spotlight on people’s actual problems in the upcoming general election in the country. The dialogue brought together political workers, labour activists, students, women rights activists, slum areas’ residents and organisers of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) from the twin cities to debate on “People’s Agenda” for the election season. The AWP leaders on the occasion said that the entire political debate in the ongoing election season was centred on personalised power struggles of individuals like Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif or battles between elected and unelected institutions, while no attention was paid to the multiple issues facing the general public in the country. They said that the electoral sphere was completely cut off from ordinary people’s struggles. Addressing the gathering, AWP President Fanoos Gujjar said that mainstream electoral politics had become reduced to a naked struggle for power between political elites. He said that party leaders used abstract slogans like ‘civilian supremacy’, ‘change’ and ‘accountability’ to mask their lack of a concrete programme to transform ordinary people’s lives, because in reality they all represented the interests of the 1% elite in the country. He said not a single mainstream party had a programme to transform Pakistan’s embedded system of class, ethnic and gender inequality. He said only a rebuilding of left-wing working-class organizations and institutions in the country could elevate ordinary people’s problems to the electoral arena. Speaking on the occasion, AWP Punjab President Dr.Aasim Sajjad Akhtar said that there was a complete disconnect between the electoral arena and the sites where people’s resistance took place. He said that electoral politics was all about local patronage-based relationships where people voted to secure their immediate self-interests and politicians competed to get the ticket for whichever party they thought was likely to come into power, without any regard for ideology. Yet, he said, various people’s movements for social, economic and political rights had emerged in the country in recent years. Scholar Rafiullah Kakar emphasised the need for serious introspection in mainstream Pakistani politics given the huge youth bulge emerging in the country. He said that a population of almost 140 million young people below the age of 25 is a volcano waiting to erupt because there are neither educational nor employment opportunities to cater to this huge demographic and it is the discontent within the youth that is also giving rise to popular uprisings against state and class power. This is why, Rafiullah Kakar said, it is an urgent imperative for parties like the AWP to bridge the gap between the sphere to popular resistance and the sphere of electoral politics. Representatives of different organizations, including the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), Women Democratic Front (WDF), All Pakistan Alliance for Katchi Abadis (APAKA), Pakistan Trade Union Federation (PTUF) and Progressive Students Federation (PrSF) spoke on the occasion to discuss various issues of importance that needed to be part of the electoral debate, from civil and democratic rights to gender equality, to education reform and affordable housing. Near the end of the seminar, the AWP’s Ammar Rashid presented the party’s platform on various issues that aimed to bring people’s problems at the grassroots and their solutions into the electoral debate. The discussion was followed by a rally in which participants raised slogans for the right to education, health, housing, political association and gender justice. Speaker Alya Ameer said that it was very surprising that there are two systems – one for men and other for women. “Women in our society are treated like a minority sect,” she said adding that whenever someone tried to raise equality issue some specific groups termed this as western agenda. She added that many important things were compromised on very small interests. This approach, she suggested, needs to be changed. She further said that it was very regretful that 22 percent ratio of informal labour was consisting on women. Published in Daily Times, May 12th 2018.