The merger of three Left-wing parties — the Awami Party Pakistan, the Labour Party Pakistan and the Workers Party Pakistan — to form a new party, Awami Workers Party (AWP), is viewed by some quarters as a huge achievement, a new alternative on the political horizon of the country.

While announcing the merger of the three parties in Lahore on Nov 2, Farooq Tariq, central leader of the Labour Party Pakistan, said, “A break from the diktats of multinational capitalism and imperialism in all its forms, replacing existing oppressive state institutions with fundamentally democratic ones and better relations with neighbouring countries are among the new party’s immediate objectives.”

The new party aims to turn the “fortunes of the working class by challenging Pakistan’s political status quo, the establishment and the right-wing, as well as the feudal and industrialist elites.”

Two pertinent questions at this point would be: Will the new merger be sustainable and will it really offer an alternative?

Doubts are aplenty.

Even though the party leaders claim the AWP is a novel step in Pakistan, history proves otherwise. In 1986, pro-Moscow groups — Pakistan National Party, National Democratic Party and Awami Tehrik — merged to form the Awami National Party. But, within months, the alliance failed because the Pakistan National Party dissociated itself from the merger, followed by the Awami Tehrik.

In 1987, another attempt was made to form the Qaumi Inqalabi Party, comprising different Left-wing nationalist parties. The party split a year later.

Again, in 1988, a Maoist party, the Qaumi Mahaz-e-Azadi, and a Stalinist party, the Workers Party, joined together to form the Awami Jamhoori Party. The alliance spilt in a few months.

“Sustainability of the new party is the main issue,” says Dr Arif Azad, an Islamabad-based political commentator. “The way I see, it is an effort of small groups to make inroads into electoral politics. Historically, the Pakistani Left has been a marginal political phenomenon, limited to a group with small membership. It is a good step to unite the Pakistani Left, but will the new merger be able to tackle the issues of political patronage and transaction politics?”

“AWP is a merger of leadership like Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal in which workers were never consulted,” says Aamir Riaz, Editor Awami Jamhoori Forum. Riaz adds the merger of different political parties is a long process. “When such things happen through a process, you talk about your faults and shortcomings — and in the same process the workers start owning the party. But the current merger has been done in haste. I seriously doubt its sustainability.”

But its programme, Riaz regrets, is usual. “It is new wine in old bottle. The Left is moving in circles. How will it form a popular political party when it is unable to do popular politics?”

Farooq Tariq, leader of Labour Party Pakistan, says the past efforts to unite the Left have been a mixed bag of successes and failures. “The Left is in the process of learning from such experiences. We do not expect to suddenly emerge as a ‘third’ force in Pakistani politics, because we do not enjoy the kind of state patronage and non-state powers that Right-wing parties do. Yet we believe the people of Pakistan want to see new alternatives emerging on the horizon,” he says, elaborating the initial talks which led to the merger were not about what type of socialism was required but basically about how to tackle the influence of the Right-tilted politics in Pakistan and imperialism. “It took us six months to finalise the merger and we held several meetings of both workers and leadership of the three parties.”

Apparently the AWP has driven inspiration from the Greek Left alliance ‘Syriza’ which consists of more than a dozen Left parties and groups with different ideologies and programmes. “It shows that the Left can tolerate different ideologies and can also become a mass appeal party,” says Tariq. Also, the idea of merger came from the country’s youth especially from the members of the National Students Federation (NSF). “While the merger process to date includes three parties, all other parties who share our goals will be welcomed by us.”

Dr Lal Khan, a leading leftist and Marxist political theorist, believes the formation of the party is a welcome development. “However the programme of this new setup is not revolutionary but reformist. At the most it is Left reformism; the merger presents a programme that accepts capitalism and wants to reform it. The only real alternative that can pull the society out of this deadly pit of misery, poverty and deprivation is the overthrow of this redundant and obsolete capitalist system through a socialist revolution.”

According to Khan, “AWP in essence is an electoral rather than a political and ideological alliance.”

Khan, however, is critical of the middle-class and the elite youth in the alliance. Khan says that the youth from the middle-classes and the elite are, as Trotsky would say, impatient. “They do not even know what kind of a revolution, if any, they are trying to strive for”.

Hashim bin Rashid, a LUMS graduate and former member of Workers Party and a staunch supporter of the merger, says the ground realities have changed and the Left also needs to change its pathway. “Now we need to follow a democratic pathway. Once we were clear that we needed to follow democracy, we decided that the Left parties with meager differences should start the democratic process within themselves and start talking to each other to form a new party. It is a gigantic task to make a democratic party of the Left and it would take at least 5-6 years.”

Rashid says that Leninism, Trotskyism and Maoism are not relevant in today’s Pakistan. “We need to seriously discuss how socialism is relevant to Pakistan in the 21^st century. If some people think that thoughts which were generated and brought to Pakistan in the 1940s and 50s are still relevant and would lead to a revolution, they need to reconsider their thoughts.

“It may be true that youth group from all three parties initiated this merger but they all have a good history of working with these parties.” Rashid adds the basic purpose of the merger is to start a process of dialogue among people with different ideologies. “At present all three parties have shown commitment to be a part of the democratic process. The programme of the new party would be discussed and it can take one or two years to finalise. We need to discuss how to face new realities. Even if some group opts to leave in the coming months, we should take it as their democratic right.”

Aoun Sahi