ISLAMABAD, Nov 2: Three leftist parties -- Awami Party, Labour Party and Worker’s Party -- will formally announce their merger on November 11 and in its wake Awami Workers Party will emerge.

Announcing their plan at a press conference here on Friday the leaders of the three parties said it would be first step towards bringing Pakistan back from the brink of collapse.

Abid Hasan Minto, the leader of Workers Party, said that the state institutions were fragmenting and often completely at odds with each other.

“Democratic institutions remain weak and underdeveloped in comparison to the military establishment and civil bureaucracy,” he said.

Mr Minto said that the situation in Balochistan indicated a wider crisis of the federation.

“Our ruling class has learnt little from the secession of East Pakistan in 1971 and the state continues to maintain a confrontational and interventionist posture,” he added.

Mr Minto said that the divisions within Pakistan society were widening that had resulted in frequent clashes based on class, ethnic, sectarian, gender and other lines.

Fanoos Gujjar, the leader of the Awami Party, said that the mainstream political parties were neither able nor willing to redress the root causes of various crises faced by the masses.

Farooq Tariq of Labour Party said that Pakistan’s crises could be addressed only by bringing together all progressive, anti-imperialist, anti-establishment, secular political forces, The party programme of AWP is: redress of the state’s hostile policy towards neighbouring countries which has been used to justify the military establishment’s economic and political power.

The programme also includes recognition of Pakistans multinational essence and the establishment of a genuine federal system based on the right of self-determination for all nations also breaking from the dictates of multinational capital and imperialism in all its forms.

Replacement of existing and oppressive state institutions with those that provide for basic needs and are fundamentally democratic in their functioning and immediate implementation of all existing land reform legislations and elimination of feudal social power in all its forms.