The PTI government’s moves today constitute high treason and article 6 of the constitution applies here.

It is our view that the PTI government took this illegal step because it could not maintain a parliamentary majority. The government has throughout this process sought ways and means to subvert the constitutional order for its goal of remaining in power.

HKP has always stood for up upholding constitutional rule and democratic procedures in all spheres of national life. Arbitrary and illegal moves such as those taken today have always undermined the writ of law and created an environment of “might is right” – which, in the final analysis, leads to military rule and chaos in the country. The PTI government was only able to maintain power through the “hybrid system” of rule which allowed it to maintain power since 2018, using an unconstitutional and un-democratic collusion with the country’s military leadership. Now, it is time for the PTI leadership to accept that this anti-democratic system has fallen apart.

It is for the Pakistani people and their elected representatives to decide what happens next, rather than holding the country hostage to the ego and anti-democratic attitudes of the PTI leadership.

The claim of the ruling party that there is a US imperialist conspiracy to carry out regime change in Pakistan is a very serious accusation. HKP is firmly committed to upholding Pakistani sovereignty and recognises a history of imperialist interference in our country – mostly to prop up right-wing military regimes. If the Prime Minister’s allegations about a ‘conspiracy’ are true, he must take the country into confidence, go through the proper democratic and security channels and seek to build a broad front of patriotic and democratic forces across party lines. We reject the wild insinuation that all the political parties, media, judicial system and security apparatus are part of a foreign conspiracy and only one party led by one man can stand in its way. The only way to secure Pakistani sovereignty is by defending and upholding constitutional and democratic procedures: which the PTI government has itself destroyed with its actions this week.

We hope that the illegal moves of the government will be dismissed by the superior judiciary and accountability of the PTI leadership for high treason will begin under article 6 of the Constitution. It is also necessary for all democratic parties, legal minds, members of the media and civil society to opposing such illegal moves with one voice, restore constitutionality, uphold rule of law and move the country toward free and fair elections immediately.

We also reiterate our position that the opposition parties have failed to provide a genuine alternative to the defunct hybrid regime, especially in the economic and social spheres. The Pakistani people are suffering under the neoliberal economic policies, elite capture and misrule of successive governments, which continued unabated in the PTI era. Opposition parties have failed to demonstrate how their rule will be different in the future for the working- and middle-class people in the country.

Disastrous infighting within the various segments of the ruling elite has done nothing to alleviate the misery of the Pakistani working-classes, and all this while, upward transfer of wealth has continued.

It is only by uniting the working classes, students and intelligentsia under the banner of a popular-democratic mass movement and fighting for an inclusive, pro-people model of development that we can bring some relief to the suffering of our people.

Haqooq Khalq Party

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