Comrade Manzoor takes oath with KARL MARX!

Finally the Musharraf dictatorship was forced to call the session of the parliament in the wake of an irresistible pressure from all sides. The only member out of the 324 taking oath with a red jumper was comrade Manzoor [editor of the fortnightly Marxist paper Class Struggle]. On his chest he was wearing a very prominent badge of Karl Marx. When he was called to the podium to sign his name the television cameras had to film him and the Marx insignia was shown on the television screens beaming to millions of the Pakistani workers and youth wanting to have a glimpse of their only representative in the parliament.

Marxist in a bourgeois parliament

Finally the Musharraf dictatorship was forced to call the session of the parliament in the wake of an irresistible pressure from all sides. The only member out of the 324 taking oath with a red jumper was comrade Manzoor [editor of the fortnightly Marxist paper Class Struggle]. On his chest he was wearing a very prominent badge of Karl Marx. When he was called to the podium to sign his name the television cameras had to film him and the Marx insignia was shown on the television screens beaming to millions of the Pakistani workers and youth wanting to have a glimpse of their only representative in the parliament. The mullahs in the parliament were glaring with a ferocious rage at Marx's scripture on the chest of a Bolshevik who had entered the parliament of a theocratic Islamic state. Yet they didn't dare to object. They were stunned!

This was not just a symbolic gesture. It was to assure friends and foes that that Marxism is very much alive and is the only ideology which can lead to emancipation from this agony of misery, poverty, ignorance and disease under capitalism.

One of the main leaders of the PPP commented, "By putting up this badge of Marx Manzoor has proved that he is the only elected member of the parliament from our party who represents and has the courage to take the party's fundamental programme to its socialist destiny".

Millions of households who were watching this ceremony on the television this act of defiance was a resolve that the voice of the oppressed would pierce the echelons of this parliament. Here Manzoor shall fight to the finish!