President Ayub Khan does not tire of describing the 1958 military coup as a revolution. This is a fake claim and all the efforts of Pakistan’s powerful propaganda machine cannot make it stick.
The political system over which President Ayub Khan presides is a throw-back to the days of British Viceroys. The executive is all-powerful. The National Assembly plays at best only an advisory role. On non-financial legislation it cannot override the President’s veto even by a two-thirds majority because he can refer the bill in question to a referendum. Chaudhri Muhammad Ali’s description of the Pakistan Government as being “a government of the President, by the President and for the President,” is not too off the mark.
In spite of his strong and well-publicised allergy towards them, President Ayub Khan has in theory allowed political parties to come into existence. But in practice all kinds of impediments are placed in their way. The way in which it is harassing the former Foreign Minister, Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, shows that the administration can descend to pretty low tactics to muzzle the Opposition. What is even worse, it does not draw a sharp line between opposition to the administration and treason. This is dramatically illustrated by the manner in which charges of treason have been fabricated against Sheikh Majibur Rehman and his colleagues of the National Awami League in East Pakistan.
Backbone
Like the British Viceroys in the colonial days, President Ayub Khan derives his power principally from his control of the armed forces and the civil services. Top civil servants and members of the officer corps of the three services represent the backbone of the Government. President Ayub Khan has all along shown considerable talent in spotting and eliminating in time any source of disaffection in the armed forces and in maintaining a balance between the military and the civil service. This has ensured the survival of his regime.
To the extent that he has acquired a popular base it rests solidly on the support of landlords in the countryside and the small but powerful group of big industrial and business houses in the cities. Basic democracy is no more than a euphemism for landlord rule in the villages.
It is common knowledge that the President exercises control over the landlords through the Governor of West Pakistan who in turn operates through deputy commissioners. Mr Khalid B. Sayeed, one of the leading authorities on Pakistan, has said that “many of the Punjabi and Sindhi landlords still carry on their activities in a semi-feudal fashion”, and that “the sort of feudal control they exercise over their tenants largely exists because successive governments have found it convenient to exercise their control over the rural society of West Pakistan through such feudal intermediaries.”
According to the figures released by Pakistan’s Election Commission, there were 40 landlords in the 156-memher National Assembly during 1962-65. Mr. Mushtaq Ahmed placed their number at 70 in his book Government and Politics in Pakistan. Of the 155 members in the West Pakistan legislature, 76 were landlords, according to the Commission. In the present West Pakistan Provincial Assembly the hard-core opposition consists of 10 members and they all come from towns and cities.
In placing so much reliance on landlords, President Ayub Khan has not deviated from the example of his British predecessors. Like them, he has little use for the intelligentsia in the cities because their western education leads them to ask for a truly representative form of government, civil liberties and other rights. In fact he has been carrying on a campaign of vilification against the intelligentsia, especially the class of lawyers from which have come most of the country’s politicians.
Land Reform
The relationship between the people and the Government in Pakistan is one between subjects and rulers. It has not yet been transformed into one between citizens and rulers.
In the economic field, the claim to revolutionary changes is equally wide off the mark. In the first phase of his rule, President Ayub Khan put through what has been called a programme of land reform. The ceiling was fixed at 500 acres in case of irrigated land and 1,000 acres in case of non-irrigated land. In all, about two million acres of mostly useless land was taken over for distribution. This has in no way modified the social structure in the countryside. As for industrialists and business men, they have been allowed to amass wealth without any consideration for the consumer or the worker. The trade union movement is for all practical purposes non-existent.
In the social field alone can President Ayub Khan claim to have made a bold departure from the colonial tradition. He showed a certain amount of courage in issuing the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance which prohibits polygamy. The ulema and other Muslim fundamentalists opposed the measure on the ground that it militated against a tradition traceable directly to the Prophet. But the opposition was not particularly strong because the general sentiment of the community, especially in the cities, favoured the reform.
Apart from this single measure, President Ayub Khan has been on the whole fairly cautious in dealing with social and religious issues. If his regime remains at odds with Maulana Madoodi’s Jamaat-i-Islami, it is because the latter raises fundamental issues regarding the nature of an Islamic State and constitutes the only big threat to the existing order.
But, even if President Ayub Khan’s claim to having pioneered a political system ideally suited to the requirements of developing countries is rejected, it can still be said that he has given Pakistan political stability for a whole decade and that this has enabled the country to forge ahead in the economic field. Though even here several qualifications would be in order.
First, it is open to question whether an autocratic system is in a better position to promote economic growth than a representative system. The experience of Indonesia under Dr. Sukarno and that of Ghana under Mr. Nkrumah makes the proposition highly doubtful.
Secondly, it is not quite appropriate to compare Pakistan’s performance during the first decade and that under President Ayub Khan. In the first decade the country had to cope with problems like refugee rehabilitation and foreign aid was severely limited.
Thirdly, the real test has yet to come. The country has reached the optimum level of exports as far as agricultural commodities are concerned and further expansion will require diversification of the economy. Pakistan under President Ayub Khan has ignored the development of basic and heavy industries which require long gestation periods. It remains to be seen whether the country can sustain the present level of growth.
No Challenge
Fourthly, no great value can be placed on mere survival in a situation where no serious challenge to the regime has arisen at all. All that President Ayub Khan has been required to do to keep himself in power is to shuffle a score of senior army officers, give them lucrative civilian jobs and diplomatic assignments, keep the officer corps reasonably satisfied in respect of remunerations and status and to ensure that the district collectors do not fail produce votes i once every four years. This might look like a gross oversimplification, but it is worth bearing in mind that the new political elite in Pakistan is extremely weak and that the political culture of that country is still essentially colonial and bureaucratic.
According to the 1961 census, the total number of people who had received some kind of Western-type education was less than one million. Of these 728,986 were only matriculates. Of the rest, 155,162 had passed the intermediate examination; 82,069 held graduation degrees and 31,470 had undertaken post-graduate courses. This is clearly too small a class to be able to challenge President Ayub Khan’s authoritarian regime.
It is indeed possible that President Ayub Khan has been storing trouble in the name of political stability. If he had the necessary foresight, he would have allowed more powers to the National Assembly and provincial legislatures so that political and economic discontent in East Bengal; former North-West Frontier Province and former Sind could have been articulated through them. In that event, it would not have been necessary for him to organise treason trials, arrest opposition leaders and whip up passions against India.
Mr. Khalid B. Sayeed has gone so far as to argue that President Ayub Khan should have “encouraged the political parties to form broad coalitions of regional interests so that a united opposition might emerge.” He feels that “the present Government seems to be efficient in curbing opposition forces but not skillful in creating political support.”
President Ayub Khan has been trying to reduce the economic disparity between the two wings by channelling more public investment into East Pakistan and to give the Pathans a sense of partnership in the governance of the country. Whether all this will suffice to satisfy their aspirations remains to be seen. But it is doubtful that a united Pakistan can be built on the basis of the suppression of the demand for regional autonomy by culturally and linguistically well-defined communities like the Bengalis, the Sindis and the Pathans.
The Times of India, 31 October 1968