Forty Years
of Pakistan Peoples Party
(1967-2007)
Quaid-e-Awam Shaheed Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto founded Pakistan
Peoples Party in the winter of
1967 as an answer to the
dictatorial and anti-people
policies of the
military-bureaucratic-feudal
nexus of power that ruled the
country since its inception in
1947. The Party came into being
with four cardinal principles
i.e. Islam is our faith,
democracy is our polity,
socialism is our economy and all
power to the people. Its program
envisaged provision of basic
human needs, i.e. Roti, Kupra
aur Makkan (food, clothe and
shelter) to every citizen of
Pakistan. It advocated a just
and fairer distribution of
national wealth amongst various
strata of the society and stood
for democratic traditions,
liberal values and
welfare-oriented policies.
The
party program coupled with
dynamic leadership of
Quaid-e-Awam captured the
imagination of the people within
no time and the Party emerged as
the single largest party of the
country. This was not liked by
the powerful vested interests
and ruling classes, which had
been plundering the national
resources with impunity for all
those years of Pakistan’s
existence. But, an un-flinched
popular support and public
pressure forced the military
rulers to hold the first ever
general elections in the history
of the country in December 1970,
wherein the Party swept the
polls in the present day
Pakistan. One year later the
Party was handed over the power,
albeit reluctantly, in the
aftermath of Pak-India War of
1971, which resulted in
cessation of East Pakistan under
military dispensation of General
Yahya Khan.
The
next five years of the Peoples
Government under President and
then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto saw the country moving
fast on the road to progress,
prosperity and advancement. The
greatest achievement of these
years was the framing of the
Constitution in 1973, which
provides the legal and the
political foundation to the
nation even to this day. Shaheed
Bhutto has the credit of
negotiating the Simla Accord
with India, which brought back
more than five thousand square
miles of Pakistani territory
from Indian occupation and
repatriated home more than
ninety three thousand Pakistani
soldiers, taken by India as
Prisoners of War. This is the
Accord that has ushered the
longest spell of peace between
Pakistan and India.
Quaid-e-Awam’s government also
held the Islamic Summit
Conference in Lahore in 1974,
which fostered unity amongst
Muslim nations on one hand and
brought economic and political
benefits to the war torn and
demoralized people of Pakistan.
Besides these milestone
achievements in the realm of
Constitutional development and
foreign policy, the
Quaid-e-Awam’s government also
introduced multidimensional
reforms in the socio-economic
sphere as well. The first target
was eradication of feudal system
that had enslaved the peasants
of the region for centuries. On
1st March 1972, less
than three months in office,
President Bhutto announced the
land reforms, limiting the
maximum limit of landholding to
150 irrigated and 300
un-irrigated acres, distributing
the excess land amongst landless
farmers.
The
new labor policy provided for
old age pensions, group
insurance and other means of
social security including free
education for the children of
the workers. Administrative
reforms ensured a better,
organized and service oriented
bureaucracy. Education, literacy
and healthcare were targeted as
key focus areas. Heavy industry
was brought in for the first
time in the country, creating
immense employment opportunities
as well as transfer of
technology from the developed
nations. The establishment of
the country’s first-ever Steel
Mill could be cited as an
example in this regard.
Quaid-e-Awam also owes credit
for establishment of the second
seaport Port Qasim, near
Karachi, thus laying the
foundation of economic
self-reliance.
While the Party was at its crest
of popularity, a usurper removed
the popularly elected government
of Quaid-e-Awam Bhutto and
imposed martial law. During the
dark age of Zia, thousands of
his admirers, political workers,
laborers, journalists, women and
workers were imprisoned, lashed,
tortured and maimed. Civil
liberties were snatched, press
freedom was done away with and
every voice of dissent was
silenced, all in the name of
Islam and on the basis of brute
force. Quaid-e-Awam set the
greatest example of sacrifice by
going to gallows instead of
bowing his head before tyranny,
dictatorship and oppression.
In
those turbulent times, the Party
chose Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, a
Harvard and Cambridge educated
eldest daughter of Shaheed
Bhutto, to lead the cadres and
the country to the goal of an
economically prosperous,
socially liberal and politically
democratic disposition. The
ruling junta increased the
persecution and harassment of
the Party leader and the cadres
to break their will, but to no
avail. The Party leader Ms.
Benazir Bhutto braved
ever-extending imprisonments in
the worst kind of jails, so did
the Party workers in various
parts of the country.
But,
the Party rose from strength to
strength and when Mohtarma
Benazir Bhutto returned to
Lahore in April 1986, millions
of people received her in the
largest public gathering in the
history of the nation. It was
because of this support for her
and the Party that the military
dictator dared not holding
elections for eleven years till
the Nature evenhanded his
cruelties and highhandedness by
eliminating him without a trace
amidst the skies and the earth
and saved Pakistan from his
further evil. With the death of
the dictator, the government
policy of persecuting the Party
did not come to an end, as
dictator’s apparatus was still
alive. However, his followers
could not resist the demand for
holding elections in view of the
mounting national and
international pressure.
The
Party’s manifesto in 1988 under
leadership of Mohtarma Benazir
Bhutto highlighted the
aspirations of the vast majority
of the people of Pakistan. The
Prologue summed up the program:
“We believe in freedom, dignity
and economic development. We
want an end to discrimination,
domination and exploitation. An
end to poverty, slums,
illiteracy and ill health,
economic and social injustice.
We stand for uniting a nation
bitterly divided by ethnic and
sectarian differences, creating
an identity which gives a sense
of pride and glory to all
citizens irrespective of the
province they belong to.”
The
program of the Party with its
record of sacrifices and promise
of leadership captured the
imagination of the people, once
again. But, the vested interests
in the civil-military
bureaucracy aided by black
moneyed classes ensured through
pre and post rigging of
elections that the Party should
not be allowed to implement its
socio-economic programs. It is a
matter of record that ISI, the
coveted most intelligence agency
of the country, sponsored
formation of an anti-Party
alliance, IJI, with an objective
to curtail the electoral success
of the Party.
Through blatant misuse of state
resources, the absolute majority
of the Party in the National
Assembly was converted into a
simple majority. In two of the
four provinces, i.e. the Punjab
and Balochistan, antagonistic
governments were help formed.
This was in addition to having
an unfriendly President and a
biased army chief at the helms
of affairs, as well as the high
echelons of the Senate packed
with the dead dictator’s
loyalists. All these forces in
collusion to each other ensured
to undermine the democratically
elected government of the
Party.
Despite these hindrances and
restrictions, the Quaid-e-Awam’s
Party under leadership of his
daughter and political heir
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto
focused on the progress and
prosperity of the country. Under
her government priority was
assigned to the long neglected
social sector. The Government
increased allocation for the
promotion of education and the
efforts were made to improve the
health-care system. Civil
liberties and freedom of press
was ensured. The status of women
was enhanced and they were
inducted for the first time in
higher judiciary, top echelons
of bureaucracy and other such
sectors. In realm of foreign
policy, détente with India,
improved relations with the
United States and restoration of
the Commonwealth membership were
few outstanding achievements.
Barely one and a half year after
its election, while the
implementation on the People’s
program was going full speed,
the President on the basis of a
host of self-serving allegations
removed the government of the
Party. The next three years saw
the worst kind of persecution of
the Quaid-e-Awam’s Party, the
one it had experienced in the
initial days of Zia. The excess
of cruelties divided the leading
players of the junta themselves
and the circumstances forced
them to hold another electoral
exercise in 1993 under a neutral
setup.
In
1993, the Party under leadership
of its highly educated and
dynamic leader Mohtarma Benazir
Bhutto came out with its new
program in tune with the needs
of time, based on the principle
of “Public-Private Partnership:
An Agenda for Change.” It asked
for a ‘new social contract,’
which redefined the relationship
between the federal, provincial
and local government as well as
the relationship between the
public and private sectors for
the development and prosperity
of the country. Again, the
people of Pakistan voted in
favor of the Party program and
the Party was returned to power
with greater majority.
During next three years of
Peoples Government, the GDP
growth rate moved up from 2.4
percent per annum in 1993 to 6.1
percent per annum in 1996. The
budget deficit was reduced from
9.5 percent of GDP to 6.0
percent of GDP. The education
budget was increased by 300
percent within three years. The
health sector got 65 percent
boost in allocations. Three
hundred thousand low cost
residences were built for
workers giving shelter to over
one million people.
In
addition to that, hundreds of
thousand employment
opportunities were generated in
public and private sector,
easing the unemployment
pressure. An innovative Power
Policy promised an end to
fifteen years old menace of load
shading. Exploration of oil, gas
and mineral resources was
encouraged, which brought in
foreign investment of US$ 581
million in this sector alone.
Her government carried out a
successful privatization
program, which was acknowledged
worldwide as being fair and
transparent.
The
country was well on its road to
progress, when the peoples will
was once again subverted in the
dark of night of 5th
November 1996. Since then, the
country has been through
perpetual crises. All the State
resources have been spent to
eradicate and eliminate the
genuine popular leadership. The
Party and its Chairperson has
been singled out for worst type
of character assassination,
blackmail, harassment and
persecution.
Today the country is again
through an indirect military
rule where an army chief is also
running the affairs of the state
as the President of Pakistan.
Barring two brief eras of
democratic rule, from 1971-77
and 1988-99, and with exception
of three initial years 1947-51,
the country has been under
dictatorship for whole of her
history.
The
dictatorial rule for most part
of the nation’s life has given
birth to sectarianism, religious
extremism and intolerance in an
otherwise tolerant and
pluralistic society of Pakistan.
This has also intensified
tensions amongst the federating
units and the smaller provinces
are drifting away from the
mainstream politics because of
the sense of deprivation.
Pakistan Peoples Party has taken
up the task of safeguarding the
liberal, tolerant and
enlightened values of the
country and has been in
forefront in arresting the
trends of extremism with its
power of people. It has rendered
several sacrifices, the greatest
being in the early hours of 19th
October, when about 150 workers
of PPP were martyred and more
than 500 injured in a bomb blast
during welcome procession of the
party’s chairperson Mohtarma
Benazir Bhutto, on her return to
the country after eight and a
half year.
In
addition to that economy and
social sector is in shambles,
swarmed with millions of jobless
persons. The country stands as
one of the poorest nation in the
world. The society is infested
with evils of ignorance,
corruption, crime, drug-abuse,
dishonesty and intellectual
sterility. All these evils are
threatening the very fabric of
the society and the foundation
of the country.
There is only one silver lining
in the dark clouds for Pakistan
today that the Party founded by
Quaid-e-Awam Shaheed Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, and nurtured by the
blood of several selfless
political workers and leaders
still remains the strongest and
the largest political party of
the country under the able
leadership of Mohtarma Benazir
Bhutto, who is poised again to
bring a change for betterment in
the lives of millions of
deprived and under privileged
people of Pakistan: a dream
Quaid-e-Azam had devoted his
life to; and Quaid-e-Awam had
dearer than his life.
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