The Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) condemns the attack by Pakistani paramilitary police (Rangers) on striking Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) workers in Islamabad on July 10, where the strikers were peacefully assembled to protest the privatization of the telephone company by the Pakistan People’s Party-led government. At least 12 workers were injured in the attack by truncheon-wielding police and the accompanying volleys of teargas.
CPP Chairman, Jameel Ahmad Malik, also sharply criticized the Pakistan People’s Party, saying that after the martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto the party’s pro-people manifesto has now been totally abolished, so that today the PPP is a party of the feudal landowners and capitalists which has no concern for the problems of the masses.
Malik also criticized Lal Khan and Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmad, whose Tabqati Jeddojhud communist party has been cooperating with the PPP for the past 30 years, based on the philosophy of “working from within,” saying that this approach has had no impact on the pro-American and pro-privatization policies of the People’s Party.
Events such as the police attack on the peaceful procession of PTCL workers and the arrest of 1000s of anti-privatization activists in recent weeks, along with rising unemployment and the soaring prices of basic commodities, are the only results of Lal and Manzoor’s “left teachings” within PPP political circles, Chairman Malik noted.
Malik stated that he utterly failed to understand how Lal and Manzoor, who claim to be acting as communists within the PPP, can openly support the pro-American, neoliberal privatization policies of the Pakistan People’s Party.
“Can any communist in the world be in favor of American imperialism and privatization?” was the question posed by Jameel Ahmad Malik to all communist and progressive forces in Pakistan and around the world.
The CPP Chairman also categorically stated that Chaudhry Manzoor’s hue and cry about the alleged corruption of ex-Premier Aziz and his government minister, Owais Leghari, in the privatization of PTCL, was useless unless a formal first information report (FIR) was registered by Manzoor and the PPP government against Aziz and Leghari - and the two were arrested and punished accordingly.
The CPP Chairman also noted that Manzoor, the former MNA (Member of the National Assembly) from Qasur who is presently Chairman of the People’s Labour Bureau and Director of the PPP Central Secretariat in Islamabad, is a close associate not only of Lal Khan but also of the co-Chairman of the PPP, Asif Ali Zardari, whose machinations around the privatization of PTCL have been widely criticized.
The Communist Party of Pakistan demands that the government halt the privatization of PTCL and immediately accept the just demands of the protesting PTCL workers.
The CPP is absolutely opposed to the privatization policies of the PPP regime, since we know – based on first-hand experience – that privatization brings only rising unemployment in the working class and a sharp rise in the price of basic commodities such as food and fuel.
In support of the complaint filed by the PTCL workers’ union, Chairman Malik concluded his remarks by demanding that a FIR (first information report) immediately be registered against the PTCL management and those police officers responsible for the tear-gassing and beating of the peaceful procession of PTCL workers, so that they can be punished in accordance with the law.
--A statement from the Communist Party of Pakistan.
