KARACHI, March 31: The need for the restoration of the Constitution in its original form and respecting the sanctity of parliament and judiciary was demanded on Sunday together with a call to the armed forces to go back to barracks.
The demands were contained in a resolution unanimously adopted on Sunday by the Sindh Chapter of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy at a seminar on ‘India-Pakistan impasse’.
The resolution urged the armed forces to give up their role in politics and stop using secret agencies against the countrymen.
It also demanded that law and order be restored and relations with India normalized. It called for peaceful means to resolve the Kashmir issue.
Participants of the seminar opined that a democratic and representative setup was the need of the hour in order to cope with the situation.
They observed that Pakistan was passing through critical phase amid tremendous changes. They believed that toppling down of elected governments through military coups and exploiting the masses in the name of democracy had been in vogue.
“By fake elections and rhetoric of power transfer to elected representatives, the whole state authority rests in the single hand,” they resolved adding that this game never stopped and with the implementation of Legal Framework Order, complete political authority of the armed forces had been established.
“Owing to entrenched control of the armed forces, the country is experiencing poverty, unemployment, price-hike and lawlessness. The number of those living below poverty line is constantly increasing. Political workers, human rights activists, trade unionists and peasants, seeking a just and democratic social order, are being harassed and crushed,” said the resolution.
The resolution made the following observations:
* A ban has been imposed on the formation of labour organizations; peasants are continuously being evacuated from their cultivating lands; and their demand for the ownership of the land they are cultivating is being ignored.
* Freedom of expression has been curbed trough new orders and ordinances.
* The country has been made a police state.
It pointed out that in the so-called democratic order, women were given 33 per cent representation at the local government level and 11 per cent at the assemblies level. However, it said, when the Constitution was in abeyance and the horse-trading on the rise, how could positive results be expected? On the other hand, orthodox tribal and Jirga systems still are the main obstacle in the realization of women’s rights, it added.
“Women still fell victim of Hadood Ordinance,” it regretted.
The resolution observed that after the 9/11 event and the subsequent war in Afghanistan, lawlessness and oppression of citizens in Pakistan in the name of ‘Al Qaeda’ and ‘international terrorism’ had also increased.
Describing the situation along the country’s borders as ‘uncertain’, the resolution indicated that relations between Pakistan and India had touched the new low.
Referring to the ongoing war in Iraq, it said that imperialists’ invasion of Iraq had turned the situation worst and there was now a tremendous increase in war-hysteria in the whole region.
