Pakistan - July 5, 1977 - Volatile lessons

PPP observed the anniversary of the July 5, 1977 military coup that overthrew Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's government as a black day. PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto made it crystal clear that Pakistan cannot afford a dictorial, extremist mindset anymore. He pointed out that Zia’s gift to the nation was terrorism and religious fanaticism. History is witness to the terror campaigns carried out during the dictator’s time. His convoluted version of Islam introduced and made compulsory in school, university and college education curricula has resulted in the mushrooming of the false consciousness permeating society today. And instead of moving towards a progressive democracy, Pakistan appeared a backward state professing a psychotic frame of mind. At the same time, Bilawal has applauded the efforts of today’s army adamantly fighting that very monster of terrorism and eradicating the menace.

At a Lahore commemorative function, PPP’s Punjab President Manzoor Wattoo stressed the need for restoration of student unions. The decades old ban has produced on the one hand, depriving students of the nursery of democratic politics that the unions were, and on the other, opened the door wide for party-affiliated student organisations to use muscle power and violence to impose their will on the student community. By now, decades on, this trend is firmly entrenched in educational institutions. Elected student unions would encourage constructive peaceful debate, replacing the language of weapons with the weapon of language. The restoration of elected students bodies would not only be in line with today's democratic ethos, it could be the best tool to turn the page on violent student politics and restore the progressive role of youth in our society. No one can be under any illusion that this will be an easy task. The Augean stables of violent party-affiliated student groups will need prolonged cleansing. If the law is applied fairly and without discrimination to criminal violence and intimidation that rules the roost on campuses today, that could open up the path to a restoration of peaceful democratic student unions replacing the present virtual battlefields our campuses have been reduced to because of vested interests, political expediency, and sinister agendas of control through force. Sttudents should be allowed to exercise their right of voting peacefully during colleges/universities student union elections as the first step in educating them in the politics of democracy.