 | |||
| http://www.dailywaqt.com/09-01-2015/images/08_05.gif |
Showing posts with label Protest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protest. Show all posts
اسلام آباد: تحریک انصاف کے چیئرمین عمران خان مخالفین کے غیض وغضب کاشکارہونے سے قبل اپنی ہی جماعت کے کارکنوں کے ہتھے چڑھ گئے۔
تحریک انصاف کی کورکمیٹی کااجلاس مرکزی سیکریٹریٹ میں ہوا، اس کے بعد جب رہنما جانے لگے تو ورکرزویلفیئر بورڈکے ملازمین اورایبٹ آبادسے آئے پی ٹی آئی کے کارکنوں نے عمران خان کاراستہ روک لیا۔
عمران خان پارٹی سیکریٹریٹ سے ملحقہ گھرکی دیوارپھلانگ کرکارکنوں سے بچنے اوربنی گالہ روانہ ہونے پرمجبورہوگئے،جہانگیرترین اورشاہ محمودقریشی بھی کارکنوں کے غصہ سے نہ بچ سکے۔
عمران خان کوکارکنوں سے بچانے کے لیے دفترکی تمام لائیٹس بندکی گئیں اور سیکریٹریٹ سے ملحقہ گھرسے رابطہ کیاگیاجس کے بعدعمران خان دیوار پھلانگ کر سیکریٹریٹ سے ملحقہ گھرسے ہوتے ہوئے بنی گالہ روانہ ہوگئے۔اس بارے میں موقف جاننے کے لیے تحریک انصاف کی ترجمان شیریں مزاری سے رابطہ ممکن نہ ہوسکا۔
http://www.express.pk/story/352296/
پشاور: ورکرزویلفیئربورڈ کے برطرف ملازمین کا خیبرپختونخوا اسمبلی کے سامنے احتجاجی مظاہرہ
— Geo News Urdu (@geonews_urdu) January 20, 2015
Not a single PTI leader, central or provincial, has so far joined workers at the protest camps set up in four districts, including Peshawar. The protest that entered ninth day on Monday has blocked a key ground supply line to Nato forces in Afghanistan.
The blockade has great national and international significance, but the PTI leaders have chosen not to join it, giving no reason for their continued absence from the protest.
The workers are left to handle such a significant protest, which points to a lack of commitment by the PTI leaders, particularly Imran Khan, who launched the campaign with great pomp and show on November 23. After the Peshawar rally that launched the campaign to block supplies for Nato troops in Afghanistan, Imran Khan did not come to Peshawar or join the sit-in in any district. Other central leaders too have stayed away from the protest.
Most provincial leaders, if not all, are part of the government and cannot participate in the protest as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has distanced itself from the blockade of Nato supplies. This again underlines the importance of separation of government and party offices. Currently, most of the PTI leaders simultaneously occupy the party and government offices, a fact that often makes them the subject of criticism.
PTI provincial president Asad Qaiser is speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly and general secretary Shaukat Yousafzai is a cabinet member. Thus, the provincial leadership’s participation in the sit-ins is almost impossible
The central leadership has also no plans to sit in these protest camps this week, according to PTI’s provincial information secretary Ishtiaq Urmar. “The central leaders do take interest in the sit-ins. Imran Khan sometimes asks me through messages and I inform him,” he said. “But none of the central leaders has plans to participate in the sit-in this week,” he added.
He said most of the provincial leaders were cabinet members and the provincial government had yet not taken any decision to join the protest.
The leaders’ failure to join the sit-ins with workers is diminishing their importance. Media is losing interest in it and workers are becoming less enthusiastic. They don’t come to the camp at the Ring Road before 10am, allowing an opportunity to Nato trucks to have more than half of the day to pass through Peshawar. At night, workers abandon the camp.
The PTI and Jamaat-e-Islami workers continued to stop trucks and check their shipment documents on Monday to find Nato containers for the ninth straight day. They forced a container-laden truck to turn back as it was allegedly taking goods for Nato troops.
“The sit-in’s importance is not diminishing,” said Younas Zaheer, general secretary of the PTI Peshawar chapter. “We are not inviting leaders because they attract a huge crowd which we can hardly handle,” he argued.
A PTI worker Malik Tahir Raees and former provincial minister of the Jamaat-e-Islami Kashif Azam were Monday booked on the charge of breaking seal of a container. However, they were not arrested.
Younas Zaheer said he had set 12pm Tuesday as deadline for the police to quash the first information report against the two workers or else the protesters would close the Ring Road to traffic.
Woman alleges sexual assault during anti-war demo
The protest on 23 November was organised by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) to coincide with the start of anti-drones sit-ins and the blockade of the Nato supplies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The huge anti-drones protest started from 10 Downing Street and marched till the US Embassy in London. Nearly a thousand Pakistanis including a large number of women had attended the demonstration which called for an immediate end to the drone campaign against Pakistan and asked the US to stop providing any secret assistance to America’s secret war on Pakistan through the use of unmanned drones.
Both the accuser and the accused, who is in his late 20s, are volunteers in the party. The woman, who is in her 30s and cannot be named for legal reasons, has complained that she was sexually assaulted during the march.
Sources within the PTI have said that the allegation is baseless and the activist who has been named in the police complaint is a “decent worker” who was leading the sloganeering on the day of the protest. The police had been told that the accused allegedly touched the woman during the march on the footpath.
The police arrived at the house of the accused on Sunday to arrest him but he was not present at that time. He handed himself in for questioning at the Charing Cross Police station in Central London on Monday afternoon where he was being interviewed at the time of filing of this report. He was being supported by the entire elected body of the PTI who have said that the accused is of “good character”.
The woman confirmed that she had approached the police and registered a complaint. When asked if there are any witnesses to the alleged sexual assault, she said that “such people don’t do nasty stuff in the presence of witnesses.
They pick their targets and the timing carefully”.She confirmed that some people in the party are “against my activism in the party”.She added: “I have recently become very active in the party affairs and that has not been liked by some people within the party. Some people want to create bad impression about me and want to demoralise me. I will fight back and will work for the vision of the party to promote it.
Touching without consent is a criminal offence in this country and must be investigated.”She said that the matter has also been reported to the party and hopes that the party will scrutinise the matter.
Capital suggestion
To be certain, the PTI’s sit-ins have absolutely nothing to do with the blocking of Nato supply because sit-ins are not required to block NATO supply routes (all that is required is a police constable to do the job). To be sure, the PTI’s sit-ins have absolutely nothing to do with drone attacks. History is witness that in 2011 we had shut down the supply routes for seven months but there were a total of 73 drone attacks that year – th 2nd highest on record.
What then is the circus about? In the simplest of terms it is downright dirty politics. It is an attempt to maintain or build a vote bank by exploiting voter sentiments. In more complex political terminology it is called ‘constituency control’. In political history this is referred to as the ‘practice of creating and maintaining vote-banks through divisive policies encouraging voters to vote on the basis’ of negative sentiments rather than community or national interests. Or the Pakistani coinage, ‘ghairat politics’.
Generally, there are two types of politics: politics of delivery and politics of deception. Generally, politicians who fail to deliver then adopt politics of deception (in order to maintain their vote bank).
The PTI’s election manifesto had 10,160 words. The word ‘corruption’ appears 7 times, ‘law’ 31 times, ‘reform’ 19 times and ‘accountability’ 9 times. There was also a specific pledge to de-weaponise. On February 24, the PTI organised a seminar titled ‘Energy: From crisis to solutions’. Speaking on the occasion, the PTI chairman committed to “end corruption in 19 days and terrorism in 90 days.”
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s real issues are a deteriorating law and order situation, a battered infrastructure, worsening unemployment and a failing social services delivery mechanism. Is there any link between the supply route and any of these real issues?
Has there been a cost-benefit analysis of the sit-ins? For the record, the GLOC Agreement (Ground Lines of Communication) earns Pakistan $1,500 per container for around a million dollars a day; Coalition Support Funds are about $3 million a day and Kerry-Lugar funds are $4 million a day. That’s a total of Rs1 billion a day every day of the year.
Plus, our exports to the EU stand at $6 billion a year. Plus, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Rs118 billion developmental budget has a Rs35 billion grant component from Nato countries. Plus, $500 million from USAID makes Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the largest of the four provincial recipients. Then there’s Security Council’s Resolution 1386 under which Pakistan is under international obligations to provide logistic support.
The PTI’s circus is going to divert Pak-Afghan transit trade to Iran’s Port of Chahbhar. The PTI’s circus has strategic losses, credibility losses and financial losses. The PTI’s sit-ins are all about maintaining a vote bank – maintenance at the cost of national interests. The PTI’s sit-ins are all about cheap politics. The PTI’s sit-ins are all about petty politics – party interests at the risk of international isolation.
The PTI may complain that the media turns its sit-ins into a circus. As a matter of fact, the circus was already there; the media is merely demonstrating that the performers are bent upon making Pakistan a laughing stock around the world.
The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com
Twitter: @saleemfarrukh
http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-217476-The-sit-in
So IK protests against the US yet KPK govt doesn't blame the US in the FIR once a buzdil always a buzdil
— Aseefa B Zardari (@AseefaBZ) November 23, 2013
