Karachi: The Awami Workers Party (AWP) General Secretary Akhtar Hussain Advocate has criticized President Arif Alvi’s address to the joint sitting of Parliament the other day saying he absolutely failed to fulfil his obligation informing the Parliament about the achievements of the hybrid regime with regard to fundamental rights.
Being head of state the president failed to lay before the parliament the challenges to the people, the achievements and failures and the future guidelines for the government and the opposition in his annual address rather than behaved like a spokesperson for a party.
He said that it is the obligation of the President to lay before the parliament what measures the government has taken in ensuring and safeguarding the most fundamental rights enshrined in the Principles of Policy under Article 29 (3) of the Constitution during the last three years.
In a statement, Akhtar Hussain, who is also representing the lawyers’ bodies in the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP), said the state is least bothered about the implementation of the fundamental right to life, which includes the right to education, healthcare, and shelter, freedom of expression and freedom of access to information and equality, rather whatever has been achieved during the last seventy-four years by the people through continuous struggle is being snatched and trampled under the hybrid regime and neoliberal economic policies as being subservient to the imperialist powers and their financial instruments.
The AWP leader said that the hybrid regime of the PTI has totally failed to deliver on its false promises. Over 25 million children are out of school despite the fact that under Article 25A it’s the state’s responsibility to provide free, quality and compulsory education to all. The government has not taken any steps to enrol in schools these children.
President Alvi also failed to lay before the parliament how many people have been provided jobs as promised by the PTI, rather 15 million people have been rendered jobless during the last three years.
The same situation is in the health sector. Prices of life-saving medicines have registered a 400% increase and people are dying daily due to the non-availability of medicines and healthcare facilities in hospitals.
The president also failed to mention about 50,000 housing units the PTI had promised to build, rather thousands of working-class people are rendered shelterless and their houses are demolished in informal settlements in Karachi, Lahore and other cities.
Women, girls and minor children are sexually abused and killed on an almost daily basis, religious minorities and marginalised segments of society are facing enormous violence, harassment and humiliation.
Mr Hussain said that this hybrid regime has miserably failed to deliver on all its promises and pushed the country into a quagmire of economic, and political crises.
He called upon all progressive and democratic forces to get united and launch a struggle to get rid of this regime and the imperialist enslavement and build a society free from all kinds of prejudices, inequality and exploitations and build an egalitarian secular and democratic society.