Pakistan

Erik de Bruyn has been monitoring the elections in Karachi and has exposed blatant vote-rigging on a grand scale. He was interviewed by several mainstream Belgian newspapers, among them  "Het Volk", "Het Nieuwsblad" and "De Standaard". Here we provide a copy of the interview in De Standaard where Erik explains the same points he raised in the articles published on this site over the last few days.

Comrade Erik de Bruyn, a well-known leader of the left wing of the Belgian Socialist Party, is in Karachi, Pakistan, as an official election observer. In this post on his blog, he gives us an eye-witness report on how reactionary parties like the MQM, with the consent of the state apparatus, rigged the elections in order to reduce the scope of the expected PPP victory. The candidates of the PPP Left have been particularly damaged by the rigging.

Before the results had come in, President Musharraf appeared on the state-run Pakistan Television, calling the vote "the voice of the nation" and the "mother of elections" must be accepted. But in fact this was the Mother of all Frauds.

Erik de Bruyn, leader of the left wing of the Flemish Socialist Party in Belgium has been invited by the PPP to monitor the elections in Pakistan. In particular he is monitoring the elections in the industrial belt of Karachi where the socialist PPP candidate Riaz Lund is challenging the ruling extreme right wing party, the MQM. You will find here a first personal report published yesterday Sunday, February 17th on his blog.

We are in the final stages of the election campaign in Pakistan. The masses are clearly backing the PPP in large numbers. Reaction is also preparing. Blatant rigging cannot be ruled out, but this would only serve to enrage the masses. In this context the Marxists are standing in several constituencies, where they are running a revolutionary election campaign that is having a big impact among the workers and poor.

At a recent meeting of Bloquez l'Empire/Block the Empire-Montreal (BLEM) in Montreal a resolution of support for the PTUDC was passed (in French and English).

The successful election campaign of the Marxists in the PPP in the constituency of NA-257 Karachi threatens to upset the plans of the reactionary MQM party that has dominated the area. It is however clear that they are preparing to use all means possible to rig the result, including armed gangs, death threats.

After many hesitations and delays, not least because of the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto and hundreds of her supporters, the Pakistani parliamentary elections are scheduled to go ahead on 18 February. These elections are different to any other ever held in Pakistan. We have received an appeal by three candidates who are sponsored by the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign and are standing on a clear socialist program.

If they go forward as planned, the February 18 elections will mark a decisive turning point in the history of the class struggle in Pakistan. In the district of Kasur, the might of the Pakistani ruling class is being confronted by the ideas of revolutionary Marxism and the enthusiasm and aspirations of the masses. To combat the wealth and slanders of one of Pakistan's richest industrialists, Manzoor Ahmed has again vowed to wage irreconcilable struggle till socialist revolution.

Two similar motions proposed by the comrades of Der Funke, the Marxist tendency in the SPÖ and YS in Austria, have been supported by the Executive Committee of the Socialist Youth of Austria and by the Regional Executive Committee of the Socialdemocratic Party in Vorarlberg. This marks a big step forward for the building of the PTUDC in Austria.

Lal Khan is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and the author of numerous books on the Indian subcontinent. He is also a leading figure of the Marxist organisation The Struggle in the Pakistan People's Party. He is currently preparing a book on the 1968-69 socialist revolution in Pakistan. The Arab Marxist website marxy.com interviewed him on the stormy events in Pakistan. There is also a short video message to the Arab Marxists inside.

We republish here the back page of the December 30th, 2007 edition of The Post - Lahore. The first extracts were from the Pakistan People's Party 1970 manifesto, the second ones from the 2008 pro-Capitalist manifesto and the third section of the page was Alan Woods' article Pakistan: The assassination of Benazir Bhutto, providing a Marxist analysis of the situation in Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

South Waziristan is a Tribal area in Pakistan, on the notorious Durand Line drawn by the British in 1893. The presence of a primitive tribal system in this area and the absence of any social infrastructure clearly reveal the impotence of the Pakistani bourgeoisie. What is new is the fact that a Marxist is standing for parliament in the area, offering a socialist alternative to the barbarism that threatens the whole region.

On Monday, January 14, a bomb attack took place in Karachi. The bomb was clearly part of an attempt to intimidate the people in the area with the aim of stopping them from voting on February 18. The area where the bomb went off lies within the constituency where comrade Riaz Hussain Lund Baloch, a revolutionary Marxist, is standing. All indications are that this overwhelmingly working class area is going to vote massively for him. It is evident that the bomb is aimed at him and his election campaign.

We have just received this extremely important report from the comrades in Pakistan. It indicates that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has had the effect of a catalyst that is impelling the masses onto the revolutionary road. The situation is now beginning to resemble that of tsarist Russia after Bloody Sunday in 1905. The Pakistan Marxists of The Struggle are playing a leading role in the mass movement, as this report clearly shows.