Hollow: Populist slogans distracting people from core issues, says AWP

Left-wing party leaders say it will not be surprising if Musharraf is given an escape route.

ISLAMABAD:

Each election sees a new storm of slogans, promises and announcements on behalf of the political parties that often prove hollow afterwards, leaving the public more frustrated than ever, say a left wing party activists.

“The populist slogans and the populism in general will plunge the country into deeper crisis as it distracts the public’s focus from the structures of economic, political and social power that keep the long-suffering masses enslaved”, said Nazish Zahoor, organiser of the Awami Workers Party (AWP) Islamabad chapter while briefing the media about his party’s upcoming congress.

“Even those who claim to be building a politics of change continue to engage in hollow sloganeering instead of focusing on building a replicable model of government in the provinces that they have been elected,” he said.

During a series of local meetings in the twin cities, party workers demanded a political programme that foregrounds secularism and the interests of the working classes. AWP will also be holding its district conference on January 18 at the Rawalpindi Press Club to gather party workers, trade unions, students and mediapersons.



“The conference is being held at a crucial juncture in Pakistani politics, when all mainstream political parties have clearly failed to address longstanding structural crises of the state and society,” said local organiser Shehak Sulymani.

According to AWP leaders, the recent hullabaloo surrounding the trial of the former dictator Pervez Musharraf masks the fact that the military continues to be the major arbiter of power, regardless of the fate of one of its former officers. It will be completely unsurprising, they added, if Musharraf is allowed to leave Pakistan in a deal similar to the one brokered by foreign powers permitting Nawaz Sharif to leave the country in 2000.

They further implied that only the progressive forces could genuinely take the task of establishing a peace with India forward, that too in times when the region continues to be ravaged by the Great Game.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2014.