Daily Times

LAHORE: Ten progressive and leftist political parties announced to form a alliance named “United Forum” here on Friday.

A press conference in this regard was held at Lahore Press Club which was attended by representative of these 10 parties. These parties included Awami Workers Party (AWP), Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party (PMKP), Awami Jamhoori Party (AJP), Jaey Sindh Mahaz (Khalid Junejo), Jammu Kashmir Peoples’s National Party, Balochistan National Movement (BNM), Pakistan Trade Unions Defence Campaign, Pakistan Mazdoor Mahaz (PMM), Jammu Kashmir Awami Workers Party, and Communist Party of Pakistan.

However an eight member committee was also formed by these progressive political parties including Akhtar Hussain, Taimur Rehman, Amanullah Sheikh, Imdad Qazi, Shaukat Chaudhary, Awais Qarni, Nisar Shah and Khalid Junejo. While addressing the press conference, the speakers explained the reason behind this alliance that the mainstream political parties of the ruling class have miserably failed to present the solution of growing economic and political crisis of the country. They don’t have any solution except preferring only to indulge in accusing each other for their corruption, which forced them to form this alliance.

While speaking on occasion, Taimur Rahman said that the alliance demanded that all missing persons be brought to the surface and a due process be adopted if they have committed any crime. All immigrants be sent back to their respective countries since the mischievous elements take cover of these refugees, he said adding the innocent minority girls be protected from the onslaught of hooligans in the name of converting their religion.

Akhtar Hussain said that alliance also demanded the sugar mills mafia be regulated to compensate the growers according to law. In KPK, the tenancy rights to till the forest protected lands be restored. The unjust criminal cases against farmers of Hashnagar and Okara military farms be withdrawn and their land rights be restored after releasing them, he said.

Shuakat Chudhry said that among demands of alliance is that the student unions be restored as the democratic right of the students. He said that the election reforms passed by the parliament are rejected and it is demanded that these may be reframed according to the petition filed by AWP in the Supreme Court.

“In our view, corruption is an integral part of bourgeois system which needs to be replaced by an alternative system. And that alternative is socialism”, said the communiqué issued at the end of the meeting. Nisar Shah said that the vast majority of Pakistani population is still living under the yoke of feudalism, the left leaders claimed. He said that the ruling classes are deliberately using religion to camouflage their exploitation and to suppress the narrative of the social forces striving for a real socio-economic change. This practice is exacerbating trends of fundamentalism, extremism and intolerance in the country, he told the media adding, “Therefore we resolve hereby to launch a concerted struggle against the flowing anti-people trends in the country”.

It was also pledged by the United Forum to lodge a campaign against feudalism, fanaticism, extremism, and in support of the workers, farmers and tenants, to work for the supremacy of the parliament and against the paradigm of a security state, to establish Pakistan as a multi-cultural according to the concept given in the Lahore Resolution of 1940 so that every nationality may have full access and control over their resources, to ensure gender equality and just treatment with minorities, to reconstitute a state on the principle of separation of state from religion, to establish a socialist economy with no distinction of class in the education system that should be founded on scientific lines, free and fair access of all citizens with constitutional guarantee to shelter, employment, education and healthcare system, to ensure a positive and non-aligned foreign policy, friendly economic and political relations with all neighbouring countries based on the principle of non interference.

Published in Daily Times, December 30th 2017.