November 26th,
2009 | 49 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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