THE Awami League, which has emerged supreme in East Pakistan, and the Pakistan People's Party, which almost swept the board in West Pakistan, have many similarities in their platforms. It is over the political structure that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto disagree. Mujib wants almost full autonomy for the East wing; Bhutto wants a strong centre. With growing feeling in West Pakistan that East Pakistanis should go their own way if they want to, will Bhutto eventually decide it's better to be number one in half of Pakistan than number two in all of it?

Cover story: The Sheikh Goes West

T. J. S. George
Karachi

ANY one of three factors makes the events of December politically sensational for Pakistan. First, a military dictatorship enjoying absolute power was in fact voluntarily stepping down and handing power back to the politicians. Only after the national assembly election on December 7 did Pakistanis realise the full implications of what was happening; it was not merely the first general election in the country's 23-year history, it was also impressively free, fair and peaceful. President Yahya Khan was the real hero of the elections.

Second, the results indicated a diminution of the power traditionally enjoyed by the orthodox religious leaders — a development of major significance in a country born of a communal idea. Half a dozen Islam Pasands (Islam-loving parties) were in the field. The most aggressive of them contested about 140 national assembly seats but won only five, all of them in the refugee-ridden city of Karachi.

This was not for want of trying. Some 130 religious leaders had got together and issued a fatwah (equivalent to a papal edict) which said that the faithful should shun socialism-preaching fakirs (infidels). One leader told the government that if it was unwilling to suppress the socialists it should step aside and let his own followers punish the fakirs on the streets. There were open threats of doing an Indonesia (which a People's Party leader countered by saying that in that case his own party would do a Vietnam).

The electorate apparently ignored the threats as well as the edicts. It looks as though Pakistan, despite its origin, is passing into the hands of a new generation which is less prone to accept a theological doctrine as an end in itself and is getting progressively interested in economic programmes.

Third, a powerful desire for change dominates the mood of the people today. This is what led to the defeat of the theologians who opposed all change in the name of an eternal unchanging law of Islam. And this is what gave both Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in East Pakistan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the Western wing their overwhelming victories. It also made their victories by no means personal. They are both manifestations of the people's desire for radical change. If they do not satisfy that desire, other manifestations will arise.

The change people demand is primarily in the economic field. In East Pakistan the Awami League has been carried to success apparently on a wave of Bengali nationalism. At a pinch the party may even keep itself afloat for a while on such emotions. But the sustaining factor behind the nationalism of the Bengalis in East Pakistan is the bitter conviction that their economic misery is the result of exploitation by the Punjabi dominated politico-economic machine in West Pakistan. In the west wing itself Bhutto's success is entirely attributable to his platform of socialism. He first coined a meaningless phrase, "Islamic socialism", then dug into Moslem religious literature to come up with the word "musawat" which stood for Islamic justice and Islamic equality. These were no more than semantic concessions to Pakistan's ideological history. In fact, he ran the gamut of straight socialismÑ nationalisation, land redistribution, end of monopolies — and the masses were excited enough to not only throw out Islam Pasand candidates but also ignore Bhutto's very unsocialistic personal style of living.

Inevitably the young played a decisive role in the elections. Students were largely responsible for Bhutto's landslide victory, making him in the process the pop star of politics. A large number of political nonentities were elected at the expense of well-known veterans. Though regional loyalties are strong in West Pakistan, Bhutto - who is from Sind - emerged as the unchallenged leader of the proud Punjabis. This certainly demonstrated the revolutionary upsurge among the people.

Revolution was the theme with which both the Awami League and the PPP (Pakistan People's Party) went to the people. The Awami League sees full autonomy as an essential prerequisite for the goal of socialist economic order. It cannot settle for a limited autonomy because it has cried itself hoarse in denouncing "the malign influence of the west wing ruling class". While supreme leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman kept Bengali nationalism in full spate, the rationale of autonomy was articulated brilliantly by the intellectual vanguard of his party — a small coterie of talented young men led by Kamal Hossain, a barrister and doctor of international law from Oxford and Rehman Sobhan who teaches economics at the Dacca University.

On the eve of the election they wrote in their weekly, Forum: "East Pakistan's struggle is not a racial crusade against the west wing. It is a struggle for realising the usurped rights of 70 million East Pakistanis within a constitutional framework. Its demand is based on the realities of power as they emerge out of West Pakistan's existing class structure. Had we thought that this social order in West Pakistan was permanent, ours would have become a liberation struggle."

Centrists argue that the Awami League's six points of autonomy amount to liberation anyway. The six points are a federal system, confinement of central authority to defence and foreign affairs only, two separate currencies or alternatively regional federal reserve banks to prevent transfer of resources and flight of capital, authority for the federating units to decide their own fiscal policy, separate accounts of foreign exchange earnings and separate militia or para-military units.

Kamal Hossain said in an interview that essentially the six points were not negotiable though some of them, like the demand on currency reform, had what he called built-in flexibility. The main points, according to him, were stoppage of transfer of resources from the east to the west wing and control over foreign trade, foreign aid and foreign exchange. "We (East Pakistan) would negotiate for foreign aid separately. You may say that East Pakistan and West Pakistan will then be competing with each other, but this is happening already anyhow. The kind of implications one reads into this need not necessarily be as alarming as they seem."

Once autonomy is achieved, the Awami League will be expected to implement its manifesto which is very clear on the matter of economic goals. Aiming at a social revolution, it rejects the theory that private enterprise is the sole vehicle for economic growth. The "institutional framework" which sustains such a theory must, it says, be changed. It calls for nationalisation on a basis of a coherent strategy, by which it means decisions must take cognisance of administrative capacities, personnel requirements and the "overriding requirements of efficiency". On its nationalisation list are banking, insurance, heavy industries, foreign trade, the jute and cotton trade, transport and shipping.

The manifesto also demands total elimination of monopolies and cartels, total ban on the import of luxury items, drastic restriction on domestic production of luxury goods and on conspicuous consumption. It wants the government to acquire shares in the equity capital of those industries which are not immediately brought under public ownership and let such equity be collectively owned by the workers of each enterprise.

It calls for a radical new tax structure on the ground that the existing system is biased towards the privileged few. Similarly it wants a "far-reaching revolution in the agricultural sector" - abolition of zamindaris (big estates), reorientation of the land system to serve the best interests of the actual tillers of the land, setting a ceiling on land holdings and creation of multi-purpose co-operatives.

It is significant that the PPP's manifesto runs parallel to the Awami League's on economic issues. It too calls for nationalisation of banking and insurance on the one hand and almost all heavy industries on the other. It reasons that big industrialists have flourished entirely on bank loans, such loans amounting to misappropriation of public money by the bankers. The PPP also wants an overhaul of the tax system including the abolition of expense account exemptions and "dishonest methods like bonus vouchers and tax holidays". Like the Awami League, it says that the existing tax system is designed to favour the accretion of wealth with the privileged classes. Toeing an identical line again on agrarian policy, the PPP manifesto supports breaking up of feudal estates, a ceiling on holdings and creation of "social co-operative farms".

It is over political structure that PPP departs from the Awami League. The PPP subscribes to a federal set-up but does not believe in making the centre weak. Its manifesto clearly states that "the unity of the country can be preserved only on the condition that the economy of the country is not fragmented and a uniformity of the legal system prevails throughout the republic". (A special feature of its platform is the call for a new electoral system which would give primacy to political programmes. "This will be done by introducing the system of voting for party lists and not for individual candidates. . . No political party that has not secured at least 5% of the total votes cast shall be given a seat in the national assembly".)

Bhutto is too much of a pragmatist, however, to let such differences interfere with the process of constitution making. He has to reckon with the Damocle's sword that hangs over all members of the newly-elected national assembly: either they frame a workable constitution within 120 days or they return to the wilderness. Recently Bhutto even expressed willingness to go along with the Awami League's proposal to trade with India provided simply that "East Pakistan accepts the Kashmir issue as a national question rather than a West Pakistan one".

President Yahya Khan may yet withdraw his consent to the constitution the national assembly draws up and carry on governing with martial law. But this would happen only in the unlikely event of the constitution's autonomy provisions being so extreme as to threaten the "independence and territorial integrity of the country". The president is not against autonomy; he has already stated publicly that he appreciates the geographical reality of Pakistan and does not believe in the slogan of a strong centre - which was a pet slogan of all previous administrations. Chances are that after the constitution is framed Yahya Khan will be invited to become the constitutional head of state.

The political leaders will be in a very difficult position. Keen eyes in East Pakistan will be watching every gesture and word of Mujibur Rahman for signs of "betrayal". Caught between the emotions that prevail within his own stamping ground and the power structure in the western wing into which he may now have to fit, the Sheikh will have a tightrope to walk.

Bhutto, ruling the two key provinces of Punjab and Sind, will similarly have to keep one eye on entrenched interests suspicious of radical changes and another on the hardliners in his own party. If Maulana Bhashani has warned of a mass movement in East Pakistan, the Council of Trade Unions president in West Pakistan has threatened "a formidable people's movement" if the political parties fail to come up to their promises.

The most disturbing pointer to the future is that Pakistan's first experiment in one-man one-vote has created a one region one-party pattern. If the two halves of the country are also to be divided on a party basis, it will only add another intractable dimension to the cultural and linguistic divisions already existing. In the Punjab area there is already a feeling that if East Pakistanis want to go their own way, they should be allowed to go. "Why should we go on bearing the burden of supporting them?" they ask.

In time Bhutto himself might think that it is better to be number one in half of Pakistan than number two in all of it. And if there is a mass movement, either for East Pakistan's separation or for quicker fulfilment of economic promises, will the army again set up a dictatorship, this time without Yahya Khan? The months immediately following the promulgation of a new constitution may prove far more crucial than Pakistan initially bargained for.