PESHAWAR – The participants of People’s Assembly and Amn Ittehad convention, held here at Archive Hall on Tuesday, agreed to work for a new social contract. KP SAFMA President Shamim Shahid was the chief guest and Rakhshinda Naz of Women Action Fourrm was its moderator while Maryam Bibi inaugurated the convention.
Ali Asghar Khan of OAKF, Sikandar Zaman and Allah Noor Afridi of SAP-PK, Gul Rehman Khan of MLF, Nazeef Khan and Idrees Kamal of Amn Tehrik, Ghani Gul Mahsud of PPP, Nazira Syed, Khan Habib Afridi and Noor Bacha of ANP, Shirin Javed, Tariq Afghan and Arbab Mir Afzal of Azad Pukhtun Students Federation and Faisal Khan were among prominent participants. People from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA also participated in the convention in a large number.
The participants of the convention unanimously decided to include the following points in the proposed social contract:
1) Life of dignity for all citizens.
2) Freedom to practise one’s religion without hindrance.
3) Rejection of all forms of violence.
4) Indivisibility of peace within and without: peace and trade treaties with neighbouing countries and cross-sectional peace committees in each union council.
5) Democratic and participatory governance at federal, provincial, local and grassroots levels.
6) Right of the electorate to recall its non-performing representatives at all levels of government.
7) Election to reserved seats for women, minorities on the basis of proportional representation.
8) Direct elections for the Senate.
9) Freedom to form new provinces for any reason – cultural, ethnic, linguistic, religious, administrative, economic – supported by the majority of the group concerned of people expressed in a referendum.
10) People of FATA should be asked in a referendum to vote for either joining an existing province or for a new province.
11) Federal-provincial relations respecting provincial autonomy in political as well as fiscal space.
12) Abolition of centralized service groups; provinces and local governments should have their own service groups and the federal government should borrow officers from the provinces on the basis of agreed quotas
13) Independent judiciary to ensure justice to all.
14) The rollback of the state must end, with its resources reprioritised away from national security and towards ensuring equity through institutionalised response to preserve the rights to livelihood, health and education, justice and human dignity.
15) Citizens must have natural and constitutional right under the social contract.
