We are publishing here a comment by Lal Khan – that first appeared in the Pakistan Daily Times – on the recent events taking place in Islamabad, where Imran Khan’s PTI in collaboration with Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, an Islamic scholar turned politician, have attempted to portray themselves as leaders of a mass anti-government protest. In reality they are nothing of the kind and have very little to say to the toiling masses of Pakistan.

As thousands reach Islamabad with high expectations of change, the masses at large are bewildered, indifferent and sceptical about all the streaks of the political elite. Speculations of deals brokered by the military chief, General Raheel Sharif, are rife. Pakistan is once again immersed in instability and turbulence.

Protests called by the Movement for Justice, led by Imran Khan and the Sufi cleric Tahirul Qadri under the banner of anti-corruption, demanding the resignation of the Sharif government, are storming Pakistan and are scheduled to hit Islamabad on August 14, Pakistan’s Independence Day. Rumours of a possible intervention by the Pakistani army, intrigues and conspiracies are poisoning the atmosphere of a country gripped by a permanent crisis and a constant in fight among different sections of the ruling class. Here we provide an analysis by Lal Khan.

If it were only a matter of praying to Allah for the masses to end their woes and achieve their emancipation, how easy it would be!

The discrediting of Congress, mass discontent in the country, a developing economic crisis and an anti-corruption mood led to a realisation by the ruling class that Congress could no longer be relied upon. Over the past period, when in power, Congress had been carrying out wide ranging liberalisation of the economy. However, it was too weak to carry out the tasks that the Indian capitalist class requires today.

The Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC) and Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) organised protest demonstrations across Pakistan to condemn the Israeli aggression in Gaza. Below are reports from the demonstrations in different cities.

India has seen two very powerful general strikes in the past two years, revealing a sharp class polarisation in the country, and yet we have the disastrous result in the recent Indian elections for the Communist and left parties. This apparent contradiction has brought into sharp focus the role of the leaders of these parties and their total inability to offer a way out of the impasse they themselves have been responsible for creating.

The upcoming presidential election in Indonesia (July 9^th) has become much more interesting with the formal entrance of Jokowi as one of the presidential candidates. For more than a year the rumour mill was running non-stop as to whether or not Jokowi would throw his hat into the race.

At dawn on Sunday, June 15 the Pakistan government gave the green signal to over 30,000 ground troops, backed by air force jets, to move into action in North Waziristan. This is the beginning of a long talked about and expected military operation against the many and numerous Islamic terrorist outfits that have been wreaking havoc throughout the country for almost two decades. The terrorist attack at the Karachi Airport in the preceding week seems to have been the final straw.

Ever since the reactionary and bloody partition of the South Asian subcontinent in 1947, any major incident, whether it be a terrorist outrage, a colossal accident or natural disaster on either side of the Radcliff line that divides the South Asian subcontinent, the drums of blame immediately start beating in full glare with fingers pointing across the other side of the border.

As we reported last week, John McDonnell MP was planning to issue an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons regarding the campaign against privatisation of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd. We are pleased to produce the text for our readers. The aim of the Early Day Motion is to highlight the issue and to gather support from other Members of Parliament as a means of putting pressure on the British and Pakistani governments. (June 22, 2005)

Gone are the days when on Budget Day almost everything came to a halt on the streets, with people glued to the TV screens or radio sets in anticipation of some major concession for the working masses. After all in those days the budgets did matter. Now that is a bygone era and the masses having little interest in what is being said or are in no mood to be continuously duped by the sermons of these false prophets. Ironically what interest them more than the monotonous theatrics of a budget speech are ‘fixed’ cricket matches. Despite the working masses being written off by the ruling elite, analysts and the intelligentsia, do their instincts not hit upon the brutal reality behind these

Twenty-five years ago, on 4^th June 1989, the Tian’anmen square movement was brutally smashed by the rifles and tanks of the Chinese troops. It was a heroic movement of the Chinese people in a struggle against the bureaucracy in general, and more specifically against the lack of democracy, corruption, and the negative impact of the market economic reforms.

Following the declaration of martial law in Thailand on Tuesday May 20, the army has today carried through a full coup d’état and removed what remained of the elected Pheu Thai party from power. This is the 12th coup in Thailand since 1932.

The landslide victory of the BJP and the meteoric rise of Narendra Modi as a populist leader have stunned a large number of secular and liberal analysts in India and elsewhere. They were in reality hoping against hope for the result to be different from the media predictions of the bourgeois pundits.