RAWALPINDI: The Awami Workers Party (AWP) inaugurated its new offices on 6th Road on Sunday, and vowed to intensify its struggle to build a society free of all kinds of exploitation and offer workers an alternative to parties of the status quo.

On the same day as the highly anticipated NA-120 by-election, AWP’s Rawalpindi unit invited recently released political prisoner and party leader Ghulam Dastagir Mahboob to inaugurate its offices, to signify that neither the PML-N nor the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) wished to challenge the power structure that criminalises the poor and political forces that seek to transform the state and society.

Speaking at the inauguration, Mr Mahboob said he was imprisoned under trumped-up terrorism charges for over five years for fighting for the rights of tenant farmers on the Dera Saigol estate in Sheikhupura.

He said progressives across the country were being victimised by the state under the guise of anti-terrorim, citing examples of Baba Jan in Hunza and Mehr Abdul Sattar in Okara. He added that enforced disappearances were increasing, while right wing militancy continues to deepen its influence on society.

Mr Mahboob said that the political left, and the AWP in particular, had consistently drawn attention to the realities of Pakistan’s power structure, and it was impossible to expect mainstream parties to truly challenge the military-controlled system that prevailed in the country.

AWP Rawalpindi-Islamabad President Chaudhry Masudul Hasan said that while the left continues to struggle against exploitative socioeconomic structures and the authoritarian state, it must also rehabilitate a culture of ideological politics as even working class constituencies were integrated into a patronage-based political system.

A large number of students, political workers, trade unionists and katchi abadi residents attended the inauguration and vowed to ensure that the new office becomes a hub of progressive politics, especially in the lead-up to the 2018 general election.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2017