The Last Trumpets

Feroz R Khan
Aug 7, 2003

The failure of to develop a political system, which best suited its polity can be safely rationalized as its most brilliant failure since its creation, nearly fifty-seven years ago. At its creation, inherited the British legacy of a parliamentary system, even though it was ill equipped for it. Parliamentary pre-supposes a that is politically aware of the issues concerning it. The fact that was born out of the crisis of the partition and it has lurched from one crisis to another, all of its own making, it never had the opportunity to develop a political system. In many ways, had the wrong dream to cling to the notions of parliamentary . It was, and is, this stubbornness to admit to the reality, that often determined the notions of as an inchoate state. is not suited for a parliamentary , because its political experience suggests an administrative rule of . is, by all accounts, more of an administrative state and its historic experience suggests that it cannot be anything else.

Parliamentary in died a quiet , unnoticed in the mayhem of partition, when Mohammad Ali decided to assume the office of the Governor-General in . By being the head of the new state and the head of its , concentrated all the powers under him and in doing so, effectively embarked towards the ideal of a presidential system. assumed the mantle of the viceregal powers in his own person and such, ushered in the cult of personalized rule in , which would emerge as the greatest obstacle to parliamentary in . Liaquat Ali Khan, ’s prime minister, was over shadowed by the personality of and thus, his office was rendered virtually ineffective and without any real political influence. By inheriting the powers of the viceroy, established the presidential form of for .

The greatest challenge, which befell the newly created state of , was to a , which could deal with the many problems facing it. Except for East , which had an urban intelligentsia capable of mastering the complexities of governing a modern state, West was totally ill prepared for such a task. The politicians of the West were feudal landlords appointed by the British to govern their territories in the name of and the of West was mostly rural and it had no intelligentsia capable of taking over the political responsibility. The feudal landlords of West had no experiencing in governing a modern state and they deeply resented the influx of the Muslim refugees from , who were altering the timeless demographics of power in their jurisdictions. The Muslim intelligentsia, which came to , from , tended to settle in the cities and as they took on the responsibility of governing , the feudal landlords saw them as a threat to their traditional power. The feudal landlords of had wanted nothing to do with the idea of and to them, the creation of was a threat to their own power and they resisted the idea of . was aware of this acutely and the reason he opted to control all the reins of power in himself. One reason was that politicians, who formed the constituent in West , had no political constituencies of their own in the new nation, as most of them were newly arrived immigrants. The second reason was that had to create a political constituency and to do this; he had to personally dominate the feudal landlords of West into submission. There was no politician of the stature of in and realized that only he was capable of dealing with the two-pronged threat, which challenged the establishment of a federal in , with centralized powers. could not leave this task to Liaquat Ali Khan, because Liaquat had no political constituency in the new nation and was thus politically handicapped.

These problems were further compounded when decided to establish the new administrative capital of in . The problem was that Muslim politicians of a united , who had struggled for , had their roots in northern and Bengal. This created another resentment, when these Indian-Muslim émigrés started arriving in their new constituencies and started to assume power. The feudal landlords saw this as an infringement of their traditional sphere of power, which the British had guaranteed them. It must be remembered that after partition in , political power was transferred to the Muslim League in from the British and that Muslim League was traditionally based in East , having originated in Bengal as the result of Lord Curzon’s decision to partition Bengal in 1905 and the real constituency of the Muslim League was in the east and not in the west.

had solely concentrated power in one office, because he honestly believed that only he had the personality to bridge the divides, which confronted . was disposed to think in such a manner, because like the other politicians around him, he too was without a political constituency. Therefore, when came into existence, it did so as presidential form of even though it claimed to be a parliamentary and, as all this power was concentrated in West , which gave another reason to East to claim that it was being denied an equal share of the powers in the new state. Hence the new , which was created as a result of amassing power in his person, was seen as a West Pakistani and in doing so, created the future seeds of political controversy which would endure, as a see-saw tussle, as would periodically experiment between parliamentary and presidential politics. was never destined to be a parliamentary as much as it was destined to exist under the under administrative of a presidential form of . Having set the precedent for a presidential from of and ruling like a president, died within a year of ’s independence. Upon his , Liaquat Ali Khan aware of his own political non-importance sought to enlarge the power of the prime minister’s office and he tried to make the office of the governor-general into a ceremonial one. It was with this intention that Liaquat Ali Khan sponsored the Objectives Resolution and the that Liaquat Ali Khan wanted was one that would make the office of the prime minister supreme and to ensure that his power was secured, Liaquat Ali Khan wanted to deprive the governor-general of his power to dismiss governments.

It was the political weakness of Liaquat Ali Khan and his lack of a political constituency, which was exploited by the feudal landlords to preserve their own power and in order to preserve their own power, they opted for a parliamentary form of . The simple reason being since they would dominate such a , they would be in a position to thwart any policies, which would seek to undermine their political influence. The parliamentary form of suited the provincially minded interests of the feudal aristocracy, and it was due to this aim, that they would continually deny sharing power with East . The early political struggle in was fought to determine, which area of the nation would emerge as the strongest; the urbanized political centers of East or the rural dominated feudal areas of West .

This would became a haunting theme in Pakistani politics, because Pakistani politicians to offset their lack of a legitimate political constituency would periodically make bargains, which would end up hurting the interests of . In this sense, it can be said that the history of Pakistani politics has been a story to seek political legitimacy and to create artificial constituencies to maintain power. The reason that finally had in 1956, nine years after independence, can attributed to this struggle to determine the power of the governor-general vis-à-vis the prime minister, which delayed the process of the making. It was for this reason that saw a flurry of governments being formed and dismissed; of prime ministers being appointed and being dismissed. Therefore, Pakistani politics from the of Liaquat Ali Khan, in 1951, to time of d’ état of Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan in 1958 was a power struggle to see who ended up as the heir apparent to the viceregal traditions of and the right to unlimited power.

Another development of the 1958 d’état was that it created a symbiotic relationship between the and civil service, which would determine the future of Pakistani politics. After independence, the only viable institutions that inherited as legacy of its colonial rule, were the civil service and and other than these two colonial institutions, did not have a single other institution capable of governing the nation in terms of trained manpower, organizational efficiency and established political methodology. There is no denying the fact that had it not been for the selfish devotion to duty, a dauntless spirit to prevail over incredible odds and a single minded sense of purpose, which the Civil Service showed in the early years of , ’s existence as a nation state would not have lasted beyond a few years. The people who joined the Civil Service had learned their skills in the Indian Civil Service under the British and it was their professionalism and enthusiasm to the task of building , which to a significant degree compensated for ’s lack of political direction and maturity.

It was the bureaucracy, who held together in an administrative sense while country, was embroiled in political crisis. It was the bureaucracy that ensured that the country continued to exist despite all the political incoherence, and this shaped the perception within the Civil Service that what needed was sound administration and not . In this sense, the bureaucracy of seemed to share ’s vision of a strong centralized federal and it began to see itself, rather than the politicians, as the true inheritor of ’s viceregal powers. In this sense, its vision was shared by the . The in was of the opinion that could only be ruled as an administrative state and not as a , because the majority of its politicians were not well educated in norms of as much as they were in the British traditions of divide and conquer politics. In this sense, both the and the civil service in began to see themselves in the mould of a “steel ribbon”, which held the nation together and came to the conclusion that what needed to govern itself more efficiently were trained technocrats and not politicians.

Hence, both the and the civil service of felt that they were better prepared to receive ’s legacy of strong centralized power and thought that only a viceregal tradition, and not , offered a means out of its self-engineered political problems.

Consequently, the ’s first d’ état was not so much as a desire on the part of the armed forces, notably the Pakistani army, to assume power, as it was to settle the controversy between the governor-general and the prime minister’s office to see who would rule in the tradition of ’s viceregal powers. Thereafter, the debate on the nature of in for all practical purposes ended and existed under a presidential form of . ’s viceregal traditions were imbued in the authority of the president and the office of the prime minister was discarded and after having experiment with fifteen years of parliamentary (-1962), opted for a presidential system of . The reason why Ayub Khan’s decade of rule (1959-1969) would be celebrated as the Decade of Development was not because of any political revolutions, which improved , but because Ayub Khan’s rule provided what it needed most – good administration. It was also the reason, why the and bureaucracy of developed such a close synthesis of interests in ruling ; a synthesis that has facilitated close cooperation between the bureaucracy and and the reason why the bureaucracy of is more comfortable working under rule than it is under civilian rule.

After Ayub Khan had established the presidential form of in , would continue to be ruled in the form of a presidential system, even after Ayub Khan had departed the political scene. In more ways than one, it was the issue of presidential rule versus parliamentary that would antagonize relations between East and West and ultimately cause the breakup of . East was of the opinion that the concentration of power in a presidential system favored West , whereas a parliamentary system of better protected its electoral based on proportional representation. It was for this reason that it was against the idea of Ayub Khan’s One Unit and felt that only parliamentary was capable of equating the balance of political representation between East and West . West was against the idea of parliamentary and favored the presidential form of , because the feudal landlords of West did not wish to share power with the Bengalis.

More importantly than this, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was grooming himself to replace Ayub Khan as the president of , saw the parliamentary form of as denying him the ultimate power in . Bhutto realized that his political constituency of Sindh and his popularity in Punjab were incapable of upsetting Mujib-ur-Rehman’s power in East and in any parliamentary Mujib would win more proportional representation than Bhutto. In the political calculus of Bhutto, it made more sense to create a situation which would cause Bhutto to win an election on the strength of his political constituency in West minus East and hence, Bhutto’s role in the break up of , when seen in this light makes sense. Bhutto’s opposition to Mujib’s Six Points was strange, because he had supported Mujib and his Six Points against Ayub Khan in the 1960s and thus, his opposition to those very Six Points implies that the reason he rejected them, was because Mujib would have ended up as the next prime minister of . The fact that Bhutto never wanted to be the prime minister of was evident when he succeeded Yahya Khan after the separation of East as the president of .

Bhutto had wanted to remain as the president of , but was forced to accept the office of prime minister by the of 1973, which ended the presidential system and replaced it with a parliamentary . Even though Bhutto was the prime minister of from 1972 to 1977, he ruled as a defacto president concentrating more and more power in his hands. Bhutto had come to power in the post on the basis of the election results of 1970, where his People’s Party (PPP) had won the majority of seats in West . An interesting point is the election results of 1970 were for an united and for Bhutto to claim a popular mandate on the basis of those , was flawed. The reason, why Bhutto opted to come to power on the basis of a moot election results was that he wanted the power to influence the , which would give him ’s viceregal powers in the guise of a presidency. Bhutto was never interested in a parliamentary form of , as he always wanted the absolutism, which came with presidential powers in .

The interesting fact is that since the advent of Ayub Khan’s martial in 1958 to his becoming the president in 1962, continued to be under the viceregal powers of in a presidential system till the of Zia-ul-Haq in 1988. Bhutto was more a president of than he was a prime minister. This was also the reason, why General Zia-ul-Haq when he staged Operation Fairplay, he chose to keep the 1973 as it was already assuming a presidential nature from all the amendments, which Bhutto made to give himself more viceregal powers. Upon assuming power, Zia wanted to create a diarchy of power between the president and the prime minister, with president being the more powerful of the two. Zia wanted to share power with a prime minister, but also wanted the ability to dismiss a prime minister and to have a veto over the prime minister’s power. It was only after he had created and passed the Eight Amendment to the in the shape of article 58(2)B that Zia would allow a form of parliamentary representation in , but he did so under the authority of a presidential form of .

The parliamentary system of , which existed in the Zia years, was exclusively designed to give Zia the legitimacy of power and though the power in was bi-furcated, it still leaned in the president’s favor. Zia knew that he had to give up power and he kept delaying the transfer of power till he had made certain that his political position was unassailable. Zia would eventually share power with a prime minister, but would dismiss his own political power sharing system. Mohammed Khan Junejo, Zia-ul-Haq’s prime minister, started to demand that the powers of the prime minister as specified in the of 1973 be fully restored. To Zia, this was unthinkable and hence, he dismissed the and scheduled to hold another . Zia would die in a plane crash, but the would be held on schedule and Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the first civilian martial administrator in the world, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, would became the new prime minister of . Once again, would tempt to reverse the time and would become a parliamentary form of .

The two tenures of power, which saw Benazir Bhutto became the prime minister was supposed to usher in a parliamentary form of . However, Bhutto was not interested in a parliamentary form of as she was interested in getting rid of the article 58 (2)B in the . The article in question was ordained by Zia to keep a check on the powers of the prime minister and since Bhutto harbored presidential dreams; she did not take lightly towards her powers being curtailed. Bhutto wanted to revert to a situation, where she would end up in charge of ’s viceregal traditions of power. Bhutto’s power plays against the office of the president agitated Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Ghulam Ishaq Khan did not approve of Bhutto’s intentions, because being of a bureaucratic background and having served in the Ayub Khan’s and Zia’s administrations, he felt that should be an administrative state and not a .

Ghulam Ishaq Khan was determined to avoid the repeat of the first ten years of and he resisted giving Bhutto, what she wanted politically. To complicate matters even more, Bhutto developed a personal dislike for Nawaz Sharif, whom she blamed for denying her electoral success in Punjab. Bhutto needed to win Punjab to fully expunge the memory of Zia. Ironically, in this Bhutto was out of step with the rest of , which wanted to forget the legacy of the dead general and move towards the future. In this sense, Bhutto faithfully kept alive the memory of Zia by dredging up his ghost and refusing to let his memory fade away. Finally tried by the personal politics of confrontation between Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, with the tacit approval of Mirza Aslam Baig, chief of the army, dissolved the national assembly and called for new . Ghulam Ishaq Khan saw the office of the presidency as the more realistic option given Pakistani political traditions and he did not like the fact that Bhutto was determined to revive the prime minister’s powers as enjoyed by her father, which in reality were more presidential than they were prime ministerial.

As the 1980s turned into the last decade of the twentieth century, Nawaz Sharif was made the next prime minister of . Upon assuming power, Nawaz Sharif too become seduced by the charms of ’s viceregal powers and demanded that his office be given the same spectrum of power, as enjoyed by the other parliamentary heads of . Ghulam Ishaq Khan did not like the idea, because he thought that ’s political institutions were not mature enough to handle an all powerful prime minister. Nawaz Sharif’s idea was to rule in the guise of a president and he saw the greatest threat to his presidential ambitions from the president’s right to use article 58(2)B to dismiss and form governments. However, what changed the situation was that Mirza Aslam Baig had retired and General Asif Nawaz replaced him. General Nawaz was a professional soldier and he publicly declared his intentions to remain apolitical.

However, Nawaz Sharif did not have the time he needed, as General Nawaz would shortly die from a cardiac arrest and this was the opportunity Ghulam Ishaq Khan needed. The Nawaz Sharif’s was dismissed. Again, Bhutto was given another opportunity, but this time it seemed as if there was a civil within the Bhutto herself. Bhutto had married Asif Zardari and many people in questioned the . It seemed that Bhutto had married because she needed a husband to ensure her election in a Muslim male dominated society. After , it was becoming apparent that Zardari was keen on replacing the Bhutto as the prima donnas of Sindh and Pakistani politics. This perception was only reinforced, when Murtaza Bhutto, was killed in an argument with the police right outside the residence of the Bhuttos. Some people in , always partial to conspiracy theories, claimed that it was Zardari who had orchestrated the assassination. This incident show cased Bhutto as an ineffective leader and the fact that she was more personally interested in hounding Nawaz Sharif than ruling , forced the president to dismiss her once again on charges of incompetence and .

Nawaz Sharif in his second reincarnation as the prime minister won with a significant electoral result and immediately set out to solidify his position. He used his parliamentary strength to revoke the Eight amendment and article 58(2)B and wanted to use his electoral majority as giving him absolutist powers. Nawaz Sharif wanted to use the viceregal powers of as a sort of divine right to rule and he was determined to stifle any dissent against his rule. His two and a half years of power saw the curtailment of the president’s powers; the attack and the intimidation of the judiciary in and a warning to the army not interfere in politics. Nawaz Sharif’s second term in office was devoted to the tasks, which he could not complete in the first term and that was, the consolidation of power in the office of the prime minister, with all the presidential prerogatives of the 1973 . It is not clear just what Nawaz Sharif wished to achieve by implementing sharia in , but he would use his “heavy mandate” to pass the Fifteenth amendment to bring about an Islamic form of in and to make himself as potentate of an Islamic theocracy. The amendment would fail in the senate and before Nawaz Sharif would recover from that set back, his was summarily dismissed by a d’ état in October 1999.

The third d’ état in ’s history highlighted a very peculiar aspect of Pakistani politics and in this sense; this traced its lineage directly to the of 1958 and 1977. Nawaz Sharif had set in motion events, which would bring the army back to power, when he dismissed General Pervaiz Musharraf as the chief of army staff. Nawaz Sharif had appointed one of his own supporters as the chief of army staff and in doing so; he greatly showed his ignorance of the -civilian “gentlemen’s agreement”. Pakistani army has traditionally intervened in politics, but it did not tolerate political interventions in its domestic matters. The army in is of the opinion that the politicians are hopeless, when it comes to ruling , because civilian politics is petty and resolves around personalized issues and self generated crisis. The sees itself as the only national institution in , which is above the pettiness of provincialism. It has been the dream of the army in to create a political system without politicians and all its political engineering, historically has been designed to this effect.

Consequently, the army in Pakistani politics has developed an opinion and a set of believes, which conveys the impression that can only be ruled as an administrative state, with the stern paternalism of the colonial legacy. In this opinion, the army finds ready support from the other institution of colonialism that inherited. The Civil Service of is of a similar opinion and with the army; they consider themselves to be the “steel ribbon” which holds together. The bureaucracy considers the politicians as conflict prone and a hindrance towards effective administration of . This perception is further reinforced by history, because in the first decade of , while the politicians were engaged in personal politics, it was the bureaucracy, which was governing and making sure that the new nation did not suffocate to by the political ineptitude of its leaders. It is due to this reason, why the bureaucracy has always co-opted to serve the various martial regimes in and why it does not mind the blending of retired and active officers assuming administrative duties. The and the bureaucracy in have a well established and understood diarchy of ruling and sharing power and are more comfortable with one another, than they are with the civilian politicians.

This was one of the reasons; why the happened and the other was that the reacted to limit political intervention in its domestic spheres. The of 1958, 1977 and 1999 all happened when the foresaw a threat to its integrity. It is quite understandable that most Pakistanis will not agree to this argument and will deny it vehemently, but historic facts seen without the prism of emotionalism and idealism, portrays a very different picture. The army under Ayub Khan could have imposed martial anytime it wanted and Ayub Khan was the commander-in-chief of the army for a number of years before he dismissed the of Iskander Mirza.

It was Mirza who had bought Ayub Khan into the inner sanctum of power in and Ayub Khan, even after martial , had ceded to the authority of the president. Mirza was only dismissed and dispatched to exile in England, when he started to promote officers and increase their salaries to offset the influence of Ayub Khan. Mirza knew that sooner or later, he would have to confront Ayub Khan for the sole power in and if could build a support base, within the army, his task of removing Ayub Khan would be made much easy. It was only when Mirza had began to pre-empt Ayub Khan, was he dismissed and his dismissal was effected to prevent the internal cohesion of the army from being politicized. In fact, it was upon the suggestion of Zulifkar Ali Bhutto that Ayub Khan accepted the title of a field marshal, as to be head and shoulders above all the other officers promoted by Mirza. Ayub Khan’s becoming the field marshal was to reconstitute the army’s command structure and to regain the internal cohesion of the army.

In a similar sense, the of 1977 was made more probable by Bhutto himself, when he assumed power in 1973 as the prime minister of . Prior to becoming prime minister, Bhutto had developed relations with the senior army officials and he would use these relations to marginalize Yahya Khan and more importantly, to argue for a action in East . After the separation of East , Bhutto needed to minimize his support on the army and it was for this reason that he would engage in mass dismissals of Pakistani army officers after . Also, to prevent the army from hindering his political ambitions, Bhutto would create the Federal Security Force (FSF), which was to be a parallel army devoted to the cult of Bhutto and to protect his power in . The dismissal of generals, who had used force in East and who had helped Bhutto come to power in the post , was a silent d’ état by Bhutto. In doing so, Bhutto made sure that the army would be subservient to his interests. Bhutto wanted to appoint leaders who would be directly grateful to his patronage of their careers. Hence, it was this idea of Bhutto’s, which saw the promotion of many officers out of turn and it was for this reason that Bhutto picked an obscure armored corps commander by the name of Zia-ul-Haq to be the chief of army.

Where Bhutto miscalculated was that Zia would be true to his salt and if given the option, he would act to protect the institutional interests of the army. In dismissing senior officers, Bhutto opened up chances of promotions and thus, promoted many junior officers to ranks, where they could be influential in formulating Bhutto’s removal. These officers saw the as junior field officers and they had bitterly resented Bhutto’s role in the fermenting the crisis, which caused the break up of East . These officers also did not like Bhutto’s intentions to use the army in Baluchistan to quell a political opposition against his rule. They had seen what had happened, when Bhutto had convinced the generals of to open fire on their own in and now they were aghast that Bhutto was repeating the same acts in Baluchistan. These junior officers, who held the ranks of colonels and majors (Pervaiz Musharraf was a colonel at the time of 1977 ), were of the opinion that Bhutto had to be removed or he would cause the complete disintegration of what was left of after . The fact that after the of 1976, Bhutto wanted to use the army to resist the political opposition to his rule, forced these middle ranked officers of army to approach Zia-ul-Haq and give the chief of army staff a demarche – it was either Bhutto or a mutiny in the army. Zia forced with serving Bhutto or risking an internal mutiny in the army, decided the army’s internal unity was more important than Bhutto and the Quide-e-Awam was duly informed that he was no longer in power.

Hence, the of 1999 was also similar in the sense that it was undertaken to protect the internal unity of the army from political inventions. army has always reacted with force to secure its internal cohesion. The threat perception of the army is that greatest threat to , and ipso facto to itself, does not come from , but internally from politics of . Political interventions in the affairs of the army create the impression that the politicians are attempting to unravel the “steel ribbon”, an outcome, which is totally unacceptable to the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. When the armed forces, specially the army, uses the metaphor that it is the ideological defender of , it suggests that army thinks of itself as the only institution in the nation left intact, which is still true to ’s original vision of ; a , which transcends provincialism. ruled in the viceregal traditions of a paternal, but firm colonial administrator and the army is of the opinion that can only be administrated in the traditions of viceregalism and that the nation is not mature for a democratic system of .

Therefore, the history of has posed four basic questions. These four questions offer a choice, from which it has to decide what it wants. The choices are whether to adopt a presidential or a prime ministerial form of and the second set of choices are whether needs to be governed as an administrative state or as a . First set of questions has, to an extent, already been answered and has existed under a presidential form of for most of its history. The only time was a true parliamentary was the period from ’s in 1948 to the imposition of the first martial in 1958. From Liaquat Ali Khan to Iskander Mirza, experimented with a prime ministerial form of , but the inability of the Pakistani politicians to compromise resulted in the failure of parliamentary in .

From Ayub Khan to the time of Pervaiz Musharraf, has experienced a presidential rule of power and even ’s most famous, or infamous prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, ruled as a president. Bhutto, after all the amendments he made to the of 1973, had amassed so much power into his office that he was more of a president than a prime minister. Zia-ul-Haq’s idea of based on a nizam-e-mustafa was idealized on the diarchy of a powerful caliph and a facilitating vizier, but Mohammad Khan Junejo was not forthcoming in that regard. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif ruled as presidents, while making empty paeans to the parliamentary form of .

The other question, which needs to decide, is what type of governance it wishes. The past experience of would suggest that is more of an administrative state than it is suited for the tolerance of a . Most Pakistanis remember the period of Ayub Khan with not because Ayub Khan was democratic, but because he offered a form of administrative stability, which was sorely missing in the first decade of in (1948-1958). Even in this, Ayub Khan takes the credit, which was rightfully due to the Nawab of Kalabagh, who ruled as the governor of West during the era of One Unit. has traditionally failed in for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons was the early politicians of were feudalist in their outlooks and they were more accustomed to autocracy than they were to the idea of compromise, which the sine qua non of a democratic tradition.

Secondly, these same politicians were too wedded to the idea of provincialism and to preserve their power, they tended to put their personal interests before the interests of the nation. More importantly, they were never reconciled to the idea of . The idea of to them meant the of all their political priorities, which they had assiduously secured under the British rule. It was for this reason, that the area that became had Muslims who were against the idea of and did not wish for to be created. The only Muslims who really wanted were in Bengal and after partition, the concentration of power in the west meant that East was denied its share of power due to its egalitarian ideas of and majority rule.

If the politicians of West had to given into the demands of East , they would have seen the end of their power and to them, it was more beneficial to see break up than lose their own power base. It was for this reason, why Bhutto and the Punjabi bureaucrats and the army objected to sharing power with East and why ’s making process was so delayed and tortured. In hindsight, though there is no substitute for , is not prepared for , because politics in are based on the principles of negativism. Politics in and the route to political legitimacy in is predicated on the idea of denouncing the opposition instead of seeking grounds, which compliment compromise, Pakistani politics are confrontational and prone to rigidity. Also, Pakistani politics are divisive and inclined towards political apartheid. This political exclusion can be seen in Pakistani politics and its historic divisions of separate electorates. There can be no truly inclusive in , as long as its majority persists in creating a political apartheid and of classifying its according to their religious beliefs.

It was the issue of separate electorates, which to a large degree alienated East , because West was afraid to contest power on the basis of proportional representation. One Unit was nothing more an elaborate form of a separate electorate and the reason, why East broke away, was because West Pakistani politicians were incapable of understanding – that power comes from consensus and not its denial to others. These same politicians and these same ideas still dominate, what is the left of the rump state of ’s . They do not seem to have learned from their mistakes. Even though this will be galling to many, is incapable of having a , because it is still fixated on a rule of based on the idea of colonial paternalism. As long as the Pakistanis think of themselves as a collection of people instead of one people, they will be incapable of creating a . These questions have to be answered and the only question still left unanswered is whether the Pakistanis have the courage to admit that they have not been able overcome their petty differences. It is the lack of resolution to the petty differences in Pakistani politics, which have unfortunately given credence to the internal perceptions of the and the bureaucracy about the efficacy of the “steel ribbon”.

This is not to suggest that will remain a dismal failure as far as is concerned, but it does suggest that in will be a failure. The reason will be a failure in is, because has historically been seen as a route to autocratic power in . Unless, the people of and all who rule are willing to disabuse this notion and reinvest a sense of legitimacy into the idea, will be seen as nothing more than a pathetic excuse in the Pakistani political lexicon.



REFERENCES

Afzal M. in , -1958. 1976
Ahmad, A. S. Pakistani Society, , and Leadership. 1986
Ahmad M. The Civil Servant in . 1964
Ahmad M. At The Cross Roads. 1985
Ali A. The Punjab Under Imperialism, 1885-. 1988
Amin T. Ethno-National Movements of . 1988
Becker, M. L. The All Muslim League:1906-. 1957
Birkhead, I. H. The Administrative Problems in . 1966
Burki, S. J. Under Bhutto, -1977. 1988
Ibid. : The Continuing Search For Nationhood. 1991
Burney, I. H. No Illusions, Some Hopes and No Fears. 1996
Chopra, P. Contemporary : New Aims and Images. 1983
Cohen, S. P. The Army. 1989
Fraser, L. Under Lord Curzon. 1911
Hasan, K. The Transfer of Power. 1966
Hayes, L. D. Politics in : The Struggle for Legitimacy. 1984
Jalal, A. The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of ’s Political of Defence. 1991
Kennedy, C. H. Bureaucracy in . 1987
Khan, Asghar Generals in Pakistani Politics, 1958-1982. 1983
Khan, F. M. The Story of Army. 1963
Low, D. A. The Political Inheritance of . 1991
Lumby, E. W. R. The Transfer of Power In . 1954
Mahmood, S. Constitutional Foundations of . 1990
Munir, M. From to Zia. 1980
Newman, Karl F. Under Ayub, Bhutto and Zia-ul-Haq. 1986
Rizvi, H. A. The And The Politics In , -1986. 1986
Sayeed, K. B. : The Formative Phase. 1960
Ibid. The Political System of . 1967
Zakaria, N. Parliamentary In . 1958
Ziring, L. in the Twentieth Century: A Political History. 1997