16—Presidential Rule was Quaid’s Choice’s
Thus had Pakistan been conceded. There is overwhelming evidence to the effect that the Quaid had come to realise that a constitution on the pattern of the Westminster could not resolve the problems that a new state could face. In July 1947, while engaged in the negotiations for dominion status, the Quaid had jotted a note to himself: “Danger of Parliamentary form of government: (1) It has worked satisfactorily so far in only England, and nowhere else. (2) Presidential form of government more suited to Pakistan.
In a speech given in Balochistan after independence, Quaid-i-Azam spoke clearly that Presidential rule would be more beneficial than a legislative form of government. It is amazing how these views of the Quaid were not allowed to surface. His word was supposed to be the law, yet Daultana and Mamdot had joined hands in Lahore to defy the orders of the Quaid regarding the governorship of Punjab.
In fact the entire feudal aristocracy and bureaucratic elite had adopted “wait and see” behaviour in anticipation of the Quaid’s eventual defeat at the hands of the lung-eating tuberculosis.
Prime Minister Liquat Ali Khan had his own problems —not being a son of the soil and having to rely largely on the support of the scheming elite class.
In my boyhood days I was to learn about a banned book by Dr. Illahie Bux the last physician of the Quaid who had taken care of the Quaid’s health at Ziarat during his last days. In that book he had reportedly written that when one day Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah had informed her brother that the Prime Minister had come to see him, the Quaid had bitterly remarked: “He has come to make sure that I die.”
As I have not read the book I can’t testify to the authenticity of the alleged remark, but the way the Quaid had died on September 11, 1948 in an ambulance on a road-side of Karachi where the vehicle had run out of fuel on its way from the airport, raises very disturbing questions about the character of the companions of the Quaid.
