EDITORIAL: Field Marshal Ayub Khan has passed into history. He ruled the country with a remarkable plenitude of power. … He liked to think of himself as a benevolent wielder of power. … His contempt for the political profession might have been one of the factors that prompted him to seize power. But for over a decade he was the only politician we had, the earlier practitioners of politics having been rendered unpersons. … His performance … would demand a long discussion such as is not possible within the limited space available. Here we will have to confine ourselves to some of the most important aspects of his rulership. Some of his notable successes were achieved in the spheres of economic planning and foreign policy. …

His failure manifested itself in his inability to realise that personal power was too outdated even in a politically under-developed country like Pakistan. … As if by some divine right, he gave the country his constitution. It was Martial Law in plain clothes, lacking even a minimum degree of … democratic traditions. … Personally, he was likeable. He was not the kind of tyrant that dictators are prone to be. His failure, mainly, lay in his lack of political vision.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2024