November 26th, 2009 | 36 Comments
This story is from the Time Magazine
datelined Christmas Day 1964. It sheds interesting light on how far back this
game of the security establishment conjuring up images of US-India collusion
go. Ayub Khan actually accused Fatima Jinnah of being
pro-Indian and pro-American. Oldest trick in the security
establishment’s book. -YLH
“They call her the Mother of the Nation,” sniffed Pakistan’s President
Mohammed Ayub Khan. “Then she should at least behave like a mother.” What upset
Ayub was that Fatima Jinnah looked so good in pants. The more she upbraided
Ayub, the louder Pakistanis cheered the frail figure in her shalwar (baggy
white silk trousers). By last week, with Pakistan’s first presidential election
only a fortnight away, opposition to Ayub had reached a pitch unequaled in his
six years of autocratic rule.
The Big Stick. White-haired Miss Jinnah, 71, the candidate of five
ragtag and usually disunited opposition parties, was picked mainly because she
was the sister and confidante of the late revered Mohammed Ali Jinnah, father
of his nation’s independence. But Pakistan’s response to her razor-tongued
attacks on Ayub’s highhanded ways has surprised and shocked the government.
Students throughout the nation staged angry protest marches against the regime,
and at least one demonstrator was killed by police in Karachi. DOWN WITH THE
AYUB DICTATORSHIP, cried posters in the East Pakistan city of Dacca, where
students enthusiastically proclaimed Miss Fatima Jinnah Week. In Karachi,
Pakistan’s biggest city, student unrest prompted the government to close all
the schools indefinitely.
Most legal groups in Pakistan have come out for Miss Jinnah, and were
denounced by Ayub as “mischiefmongers.” In reply, the Karachi Bar Association
overwhelmingly adopted a resolution urging “the party in power to get rid of
the notion that wisdom, righteousness and patriotism are the monopoly of their
yes men.” The usually complaisant newspaper editors defied the regime’s
attempts to make them endorse a restrictive new press law.
To Ayub’s claim that he is trying to develop “basic democracy,” Miss
Jinnah replied: “What sort of democracy is that? One man’s democracy? Fifty
persons’ democracy?” As for Ayub’s charge that the country would revert to
chaos if he is defeated, his rival snapped: “You can’t have stability through
compulsion, force and the big stick.”
Running Scared. Actually, Ayub has been a reluctant and benevolent
dictator, who has vastly improved the stability of a country that was paralyzed
by squabbling politicians before he took over. Considering Pakistan’s
backwardness and poverty, the Ayub-designed electoral system is not half bad,
giving the vote to 80,000 middle-and upper-class electors. While that is a tiny
percentage in a total population of 110 million, most of those millions are not
only illiterate but totally ignorant of political issues. With heavy support in
rural areas, where many Moslem electors particularly disapprove of a woman’s
candidacy and where Ayub’s economic reforms have helped more than in the
cities, Ayub is still expected to win the election by some 60% of the vote.
Nonetheless, he is running scared, because Candidate Jinnah has managed
to focus every form of discontent in the country. To brake her bandwagon, he
abruptly decreed that elections would be held Jan. 2, instead of March, as
originally scheduled. Explaining lamely that the situation is “a little tense,”
the government also rescinded a law specifying that political rallies must be
open to the public.
At closed meetings with groups of electors, Ayub answered practical
questions sensibly enough, but kept lashing out at the opposition with growing
anger. Countering Miss Jinnah’s repeated charge that he had been unable to
restrain the U.S. from helping Pakistan’s No. 1 adversary, India, he
set out to portray her as pro-Indian and pro-American. Ayub’s campaign, in
fact, was turning increasingly anti-American.
Though U.S. aid (about $5 billion since 1951) is vital to the nation’s
wretched economy, a leading member of Ayub’s party cried: “America never was
our friend and never could be, because as a nation aligned with the
anticolonial movements, we are at cross-purposes with America.” As for Ayub, he
plainly regretted ever calling elections in the first place. For after six
years of insisting that Pakistanis were not ready for democracy, the campaign
had shown that Mohammed Ayub Khan probably isn’t either.
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