Amidst the over­haul in­sti­tu­ted by General Ziaul Haq’s re­gime, the fu­ture of the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) had ap­peared un­cer­tain. There were two main rea­sons for this: first, be­cause of Bhutto’s ous­ter from gov­ern­ment for the time be­ing; and sec­ond, the sim­mer­ing dis­pute among com­po­nent par­ties over the al­lo­ca­tion of seats in the next elec­tions.

Asghar Khan of Tehrik-i-Istiqalal and Maulana Noorani of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam were un­re­lent­ing on their stance. They wan­ted a ma­jor share in gov­ern­ment, hop­ing that the Military Council would be in­clined to­wards them form­ing a gov­ern­ment. Khan at­ten­ded the first PNA meet­ing held on Aug 7 but did not show up lat­er — this sparked the spec­u­la­tion that the PNA had died a nat­u­ral death.

As the po­lit­i­cal sce­nar­io be­gan to heat up, some PNA lead­ers tried their best to keep the al­li­ance in­tact. At last, dur­ing the August 25 meet­ing, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam’s Mufti Mahmood had to de­ny those ru­mours. He was fol­lowed by Asghar Khan, Sardar Sherbaz Mazari, Begum Nasim Wali Khan and Pir Pagara in quel­ling news of in­fight­ing.

And yet, dif­fer­en­ces among the Alliance lead­ers were quite con­spic­u­ous.

On Aug 8, PNA chief Mufti Mahmood called on Gen Zia to seek some clar­i­fi­ca­tions. Gen Zia re­af­firmed that elec­tions would be held as sched­uled, that the ar­my would be with­drawn from Balochistan one month be­fore poll­ing, a gen­er­al am­nes­ty would be ex­ten­ded to all in Balochistan and that po­lit­i­cal de­tain­ees would be ac­quit­ted and le­gal ca­ses against them with­drawn.

Gen Zia then de­ci­ded to ad­dress the cit­i­zen­ry di­rect­ly to as­sure peo­ple that polls will be held on Oct 18, as sched­uled. He chose Independence Day (Aug 14, 1977) for his ad­dress: “If any par­ty in­ter­rupts the proc­ess of at­tain­ing the ob­jec­tive for which the armed forces had tak­en ac­tion, it would be trea­ted as an­ti-state and will be dealt with se­vere­ly. … My le­ni­en­cy should not be trea­ted as weak­ness.”

Referring to an in­ci­dent in Peshawar on August 11, when PPP work­ers had be­come un­ru­ly, the gen­er­al warned Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that no such in­ci­dents would be tol­er­ated in fu­ture and that po­lit­i­cal lead­ers would be held re­spon­si­ble for row­dy mobs.

On Aug 27, Bhutto called on Gen Zia — a meet­ing that las­ted a lit­tle less than three hours, with is­sues such as the mech­a­nism for hold­ing fair and free elec­tions sans any vic­tim­i­sa­tion al­so on the agen­da. Bhutto had of course been trav­el­ling from one town to an­oth­er, speak­ing about the coup and the prev­a­lent sit­ua­tion that the coun­try found it­self in.

By then, Gen Zia seemed to have made up his mind up re­gard­ing the coun­try’s fu­ture: he told Bhutto that there was im­mense pres­sure on him to have le­gal ca­ses against him (Bhutto) de­ci­ded by the courts be­fore the polls. Bhutto was al­so told that if some ca­ses were sent to the ju­di­cia­ry, he should re­frain from cre­at­ing any hin­drance. In fact, Gen Zia wan­ted to show that he bore no ill will to­wards Bhutto, but in­sis­ted that if the ca­ses were there and nee­ded to be de­ci­ded on mer­it.

After the meet­ing, how­ev­er, it ap­peared that all of Gen Zia’s as­sur­an­ces of hold­ing elec­tion on October 18 were on­ly meant for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

In a press in­ter­view with a US news agen­cy on Aug 17, Gen Zia pro­vi­ded a hint of post­pon­ing polls: “If ev­ery­thing is ac­com­plish­ed as plan­ned, pow­er can be trans­fer­red by Oct 28.”

Two days lat­er, Asghar Khan was the first to in­di­cate that the elec­tions were be­ing post­poned, that too in­def­i­nite­ly. On Aug 30, as he spoke to me­dia rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Lahore, he de­man­ded that all le­gal ca­ses against Bhutto and oth­er lead­ers should be de­ci­ded be­fore the elec­tions. Mahmood Ali Kasuri sup­por­ted him im­me­di­ate­ly, as oth­ers weigh­ed the sug­ges­tion.

On Sept 1, 1977, Gen Zia called a press con­fer­ence that las­ted for about five hours. While tack­ling a range of top­ics — po­lit­i­cal and oth­er­wise — Gen Zia ap­peared more in­clined to­wards pol­i­tics this time around. Like Ayub Khan be­fore him, Zia, too, showed lit­tle re­spect for pol­i­ti­cians and said that the na­tion could on­ly be uni­ted by the ar­my and not by pol­i­ti­cians.

He al­so de­clared that a new law was be­ing pro­mul­ga­ted, through which all can­di­dates of the pro­vin­cial and na­tion­al as­sem­blies would have to de­clare their as­sets, from Jan 1, 1970 till date. They would have to fur­nish an af­fi­da­vit to the ef­fect that if they had held a pub­lic of­fice, they did not use the po­si­tions for any per­son­al gain.

Journalists were al­so told about fresh meas­ures be­ing plan­ned to ex­tend great­er fa­cili­ties to the peo­ple. These in­clu­ded de­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion, more loans to farm­ers and lift­ing of the ban on trade un­ions.

But per­haps, more im­por­tant to Gen Zia was talk of elec­tions. He said that polls could be post­poned for some days or weeks, but not months. Justifying the post­pone­ment of polls, he said, “It is not in the Holy Quran nor has it been sent as a rev­e­la­tion that elec­tions will be held on Oct 18 and that noth­ing will hap­pen there­after. In my opin­ion, the pres­i­den­tial sys­tem is clos­er to Islam and is more suit­a­ble for Pakistan. I will put it up to the National Assembly on Oct 28, and leave the de­ci­sion to the next gov­ern­ment.”

Sardar Sherbaz Mazari and Mairaj Mohammad Khan (once a PPP stal­wart) joined the cho­rus of “ac­count­a­bil­i­ty first”. Asghar Khan had al­ready de­man­ded tri­al fol­lowed by elec­tions.

There was no im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion to Gen Zia’s an­nounce­ment, but two days lat­er, Maulana Maududi re­jec­ted the post­pone­ment and de­man­ded that elec­tions be held on Oct 18 and all le­gal ca­ses against pol­i­ti­cians de­ci­ded be­fore that. Many right-wing par­ties backed the post­pone­ment fol­low­ing Maududi’s dec­la­ra­tion.

Next week: Bhutto’s dra­mat­ic ar­rest in a mur­der case shai­kha­ziz38@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 18th, 2014