LAHORE, March 6: Any idea what the whistle-blower, a certain general by the name of Ziaul Haq, would have said now? He was always a difficult one to call, but how about the “goals had to change at half-time”?
Nineteen seventy-seven has been the dividing line, providing us with two 30-year blocks on either side to compare and discuss and rue. The origins of the second half go back deep but the election day — March 7, 1977 — stands out as an unforgettable landmark in our journey. The movement launched by the Pakistan National Alliance after the March 1977 polls and the subsequent imposition of martial law clearly splits Pakistan’s politics into two distinct periods of 30 years each.
Few saw beyond the obvious and still fewer anticipated the end of a brief period of people-centred, or at least populist, politics when the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), a grouping of nine disparate parties, was launched on January 8, just a day after the announcement of the March 1977 elections by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
By the night of March 7, Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party had won 155 out of 200 National Assembly seats with the PNA securing 36. The alliance quickly denounced the results as rigged and urged the people to boycott the provincial elections on March 10. It demanded the resignation of the prime minister and fresh elections. Bhutto refused to oblige, and the PNA launched an agitation to force him out of power.
What followed were four months of political turmoil which saw security forces clash with protesters. The result was scores of deaths and martial law and curfew in five cities. Eventually, Gen Zia took over in a midnight coup on July 4. On July 5, the military dictator promised fresh elections in 90 days — a timeline which stretched to 11 years and ended only with the death of the general in a C-130 plane crash on August 17, 1988.
The PNA, which launched the movement to force Bhutto to hold fresh elections, joined the military government on October 1, 1977, and joined the chorus for ehtesaab before intikhab (accountability before elections) with Gen Zia himself playing lead vocals. The alliance did not last long, which was expected given the inherent ideological contradictions within its components.
The creation of the PNA was the beginning of the end of a decade (1967-77) of what many political commentators describe as the “crystallisation” of peoples’ aspirations and ideas of an egalitarian and democratic society, and public-interest issues like land reforms and civil rights. It also marked the inception of an uninterrupted period of religious indoctrination of the country’s politics over the next 30 years without any signs of a let-up in the near future.
“It took the masses 20 years (1947-67) to find the basis for democratic, people-oriented politics which would concretise their issues,” eminent journalist and rights activist I. A. Rehman says. “It was a defining period in Pakistan’s politics. Lawyers, industrial labour, peasants, journalists and students fought against Ayub Khan’s military dictatorship to push to the forefront the issues of democracy, land reform, rule of law, industrial relationships and laws, civil liberties, freedom of expression. For the next decade (1967-77), the country’s politics revolved around the social, economic and cultural needs of the people, and public-interest issues dominated the election manifestos of political parties. It was the peak of public-interest politics.”
The PNA, whose formation is said to have taken even Bhutto by surprise, raised the slogan of Nizam-i-Mustafa (enforcement of Islamic code or Shariah) to galvanise voters. The alliance’s election manifesto also promised to undo Bhutto’s economic reforms, bring prices back to the 1970 level and encourage free enterprise — issues submerged in its call for an Islamic system.
According to Jamaat-i-Islami leader Syed Munawwar Hasan, the PNA was under the firm control of religious parties with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam’s Mufti Mahmood as its president and the Jamaat’s Prof Ghafoor Ahmed as its secretary-general for the better part of the alliance’s life. “Our alliance was against Bhuttoism, which stood for suppression of civil liberties, curbs on freedom of expression, use of state machinery and atrocities against political opponents, denial of fundamental rights to citizens and civilian dictatorship. As an alternate to Bhuttoism, we presented Nizam-i-Mustafa to the people. All the PNA component parties were in complete agreement on it,” says Hasan.
He defends the use of religion for launching a political protest. The slogan of Nizam-i-Mustafa, he says, was “synonymous with the implementation of the 1973 Constitution in letter and spirit. We believe that the 1973 Constitution, if it is implemented truly, guarantees enforcement of Shariah.”
Syed Munawwar Hasan does concede though that the PNA protest against Bhutto and its slogan of Nizam-i-Mustafa were later hijacked by Gen Ziaul Haq to legitimise and perpetuate his dictatorship, as a result of which the objectives of the movement could not be achieved.
While the pre-PNA years signified a progressive journey from what was “nebulous” in Pakistani politics to the “crystallisation” of issues, the post-1977 years represent what I. A. Rehman calls “amorphous”, the period during which the political debate was reduced to just one point — revival of democracy. “Dictatorships always corner politics into a single-point agenda. In the last 30 years, politics has been revolving around the revival of the democratic set-up,” he says.
Political analyst and activist Aasim Sajjad Akhtar believes the “political idiom” has changed since 1977, the turning point in the country’s history, due to the exclusion from politics of ideas of change. “Gen Zia did it consciously, at the behest of Pakistan’s ashraafya (elite), to undo the changes brought about in the country’s political economy in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the people’s struggle. The country’s elite was immensely worried about the changes and ideas which had crept into Pakistan’s political economy. When Gen Zia took over, the elite, whose political and economic interests were threatened by the rise of new ideas and politics of change, ganged up behind him to weaken and curb trade unions, students’ movement, lawyers and others,” he says.
The state placed new curbs on progressive forces that represented new ideas or had the potential to bring about a change in the political culture. “In order to safeguard its political and economic interests, the elite manipulated the state to patronise, promote and encourage a new political culture based on graft and nepotism,” says Akhtar.
Gen Zia did so in such a systematic way that political debate was reduced to insignificance and people were divided on the basis of caste, clan, ethnicity, language, etc. The links between the provinces weakened, and the centre was strengthened.
“Back in the 1960s and 1970s, people thought in terms of making a collective effort at the political level. Now everyone prefers to go it alone. This indicates deepened public alienation from politics,” Akhtar elaborates. “Politics is no longer considered a means of struggle for individual or collective rights. It has come to be identified with corruption and nepotism.”
Nationalist Baloch leader Dr Hayee Baloch sees it differently. He feels that ordinary people have become more aware of their economic, political and social rights and their exploitation by the rulers in the latter half of Pakistan’s 60-year-long political history. Democratic aspirations against military rule are stronger now than ever — but there is no party or leadership that can mobilise people who want a change in their and other’s lives. “The damage done to the political economy will take a very long time to repair. We have neither the institutions needed for bringing about change nor are people ready for a collective struggle,” he says.
Could the change in the political idiom have been averted if there were no PNA or military rule in 1977? The answer is ‘no’. External factors like the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spectacular rise of free enterprise had to have their impact on the political economy of the country. Change, it seems, was inevitable. But in that case, the debate would have been within the socialist camp “and the character of the debate wouldn’t have changed,” says I. A. Rehman.
