By Keith Jones on the World Socialist Web Site wsws.org
19 April 2008

The industrial city of Multan, Pakistan’s sixth largest,
was convulsed by protests of textile workers, Monday and Tuesday,
angered by repeated power outages that have resulted in pay and
job cuts for tens of thousands.

The protests were initiated by the Power Looms Association,
most of whose members work out of their homes, in a contracted-out,
“cottage industry” that makes cloth for garment manufacturers.
Chronic electricity outages, which are depriving large parts of
the country of power for from 10 to 20 hours per day, have robbed
the power-loom workers and the laborers who assist them of their
livelihood. In Multan alone, half a million people—the power-loom
operators and laborers and their families—are said to be
dependent on the power loom industry.

For months the power loom workers have been agitating for an
end to the power outages or, at the very least, that the government-owned
national electricity utility, WAPDA, guarantee them a set number
of hours of electricity per day and adhere to a schedule when
imposing power cuts. “Our workers and labourers are forced
to starve,” said Khaliq Qandeel Ansari, the general-secretary
of the Power Looms Association Monday. “Due to the power
cuts there is no work.”

On Tuesday workers blocked rail lines. The previous day the
protests had taken a violent turn, with protesters attacking the
offices of the local WAPDA subsidiary, the Multan Electric Power
Company (MEPCO), and a bank, and torching several vehicles. Security
guards at MEPCO opened fire, injuring several protesters. According
to press reports, the police and the power loom workers subsequently
fought a four hour-long pitched battle, with police using baton-charges
and teargas to disperse the crowd.

Pakistan’s new prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, who
himself represents a Multan constituency in the National Assembly,
has blamed Monday’s unrest on “miscreants” and
insinuated that they were the work of the government’s right-wing
opponents who want to “divert people’s attention from
real issues.”

Recent weeks have seen repeated provocations by elements loyal
to President Pervez Musharraf, the US-supported military strongman,
who has been shorn of much of his power in recent months. To quash
constitutional challenges to his phony “re-election”
as president and to intimidate the opposition and populace, Musharraf
imposed martial law for six weeks late last year, but in the February
18 national and provincial elections his political allies were
routed.

The provocations have included staged attacks on pro-Musharraf
politicians, which have then been used to denounce and discredit
both the new government and the lawyers who have been demanding
the restoration of the more than 60 supreme and superior court
judges whom Musharraf purged under his martial law regime.

The most violent of these provocations occurred in Karachi
on April 9. It began with a brawl between anti- and pro-Musharraf
lawyers—or at least persons who claimed to be lawyers—and
ended with a fire in which six people died. Several other persons
were killed from gunfire during the melee.

The pro-Musharraf Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has claimed
that some of its lawyer-members were attacked by members of the
Karachi Bar Association (KBA) when they initiated a protest against
the roughing up of the former Chief Minister of Sind, an MQM leader.
The KBA president says the fighting broke out when MQM supporters
invaded their offices.

Musharraf was quick to seize on the Karachi events to denounce
the lawyers’ movement. “I appeal to the lawyers not
to spread anarchy,” declared Musharraf. “Law and order
should be maintained.”

Gilani’s denunciations of the Multan protests are a reactionary
slur. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Monday’s
riot in Multan was instigated by Musharraf loyalists or by the
pro-Musharraf PML (Q), the MQM’s Punjab-based ally.

In an editorial Thursday, the Dawn was forced to concede
that the claims the Multan protest were part of a right-wing conspiracy
have no foundation; “The bottom line is that people are fed
up—with spiraling inflation and food shortages, joblessness
and underemployment, the ostentatiously rich exploiting the miserably
poor, crime without punishment. The electricity shortage is only
one indigestible ingredient in the bubbling brew of discontent
and almost any provocation can trigger a free-for-all.”

The new government, its democratic and populist pretensions
notwithstanding, responded to the unrest in Multan with savage
reprisals akin to those employed by Musharraf against working
class unrest and political opposition. Police have been mounting
late night raids on the homes of workers involved in the protests.
A report in the April 16 Dawn says police have registered
cases against 1,500 people and, moreover, that the workers are
being charged under the country’s draconian Anti-Terrorism
Act.

On Wednesday the Interior Minister announced that all rallies
and public meeting would require government approval to be held.
The previous government comprised of Musharraf’s cronies
had imposed similar restrictions and with the same justification—the
need to minimize terrorism.

Pakistan’s new government—which is comprised of Pakistan’s
two main traditional parties, the Pakistan People’s Party
and the Pakistan Muslim League (Sharif), and the Pashtun-based
Awami National Party and the Islamic fundamentalist, JIU-F—has
promised that it will soon introduce a package of measures to
provide jobs and relief from spiraling food prices.

But at the same time Finance Minister Ishaq Dar is warning
that the government must take harsh measures to scale back a burgeoning
budget deficit. Dar told an April 9 press conference that if a
combination of tax increases and spending and price-subsidy cuts
is not implemented in the coming budget, the deficit will soon
be “almost unmanageable.”

On Thursday, the government raised the price of petrol and
diesel by 3 Rupees a litre.

Traditional bitter political rivals, the PPP and PML (N) fought
over which party should assume the finance portfolio in the coalition
government, neither wanting have to take political responsibility
for unpopular measures.

The World Bank in a statement issued March 28 said “Pakistan’s
new government must take rapid action, backed by the international
community, to avoid an economic crisis in the nuclear-armed nation.”
It added that “painful” adjustments are needed because
of “high global prices for food, oil and commodities.”

Such “painful” adjustments will come under conditions
where Pakistan’s toilers are already facing extreme hardship.
The government says food prices in March were up 20 percent on
the year. Others say the increase is significantly higher, noting
that there have been shortages of some key staples including wheat-flour.

A World Food Programme report issued last week said food prices
rose at least 35 percent in Pakistan last year and warned that
because of the continuing price surge half of the 160 million
Pakistanis are at risk of not having enough food.