The Awami Workers Party (AWP) has launched campaign for National Assembly (NA) seats of the federal capital with an agenda of representing working class and not the ruling elites.
Islamabad, (Pakistan Point News - 6th Jun, 2018) : The Awami Workers Party (AWP) has launched campaign for National Assembly (NA) seats of the Federal capital with an agenda of representing working class and not the ruling elites. The AWP announced on Wednesday during a public meeting in the city that it will field two candidates from the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) for the upcoming general election to be held on July 25, and asserted that the decision was made on the basis of two major categories of votes to which mainstream parties offer no coherent programme, namely youth and women.
Ammar Rashid, aged 32, will be the AWP's candidate from NA-53 (Islamabad II), while Ismat Shahjehan will be fielded from NA-54 (Islamabad III). The meeting was attended by a wide cross-section of civil society along with party workers and the wider progressive community. During the meeting, the party outlined its campaign design and solicited volunteers, asserting that it would distinguish itself from the politics of status quo not only through its message, but also be running a 'people's campaign' to demonstrate that principled politics is possible through committed volunteers and without lavishing crores of rupees on the buying of votes.
The party's election manifesto is entitled 'There is an alternative � AWP', and features a nine-point programme including themes of economic justice, gender equality, democratic rights, education and curriculum reform, and the reconfiguration of the country's foreign policy. The party's Islamabad-specific manifesto will be released after Eid. Speaking to campaign volunteers, Ammar Rashid pointed out that empirical facts make clear that Pakistan's population is exceedingly young, with more than 40 million voters under the age of 25.
He said that while many parties pay lip service to the 'youth', none of the country's mainstream parties have a coherent plan to address the real problems of this huge population of young people, and particularly their demands for education, employment and more generally sustainable development practices in the interests of future generations. Amaar Rashid said that the AWP is the only political party in Islamabad that recognizes that is concerned with the complete absence of planning for our future generations � in fact ruling elites are not even able to provide basic amenities such as water and electricity for the present generation.
He said that young people are increasingly vocal through social media and other new information technologies and the AWP will represent their frustrations and aspirations in the upcoming general election, not to cynically buy their votes but to together build a viable, egalitarian and peaceful future. Ismat Shahjehan said that the women of Pakistan remain the single most deprived segment of Pakistani society, and even though we are well approaching the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, women and girls do not even have access to the public sphere, let alone acquire basic rights like education and employment.
She said that the AWP is distinctive for its commitment to dismantling the foundational structures of male domination, whether in the home, in schools, at the workplaces or on other terrain of civil society. She said that the party will leave no stone unturned to reach out to women of all kinds in Islamabad and make them see that only a party committed to overturning the status quo can truly represent women's aspirations.
