THIS IS MY STORY—36
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR
The Beginning Of Disenchantment
In March 1962 General Ayub Khan announced a proposed new Constitution for the country. It was said to have been largely drafted by Manzur Qadir. Earlier in 1960, General Ayub Khan had appointed a Constitution Committee under the supervision of Justice Shahabuddin. The Commission’s recommendations on the future Constitution were completely opposite to General Ayub Khan’s ideas. Understandably so. The Chief Justice was, by the very nature of his responsibilities, guardian of the status quo, whereas the General had taken power with an agenda of revolutionary change. Justice Shahabuddin had no option except to resign from the Commission.
Under Ayub Khan’s new Constitution, a National Assembly of 156 members was to be created by the holding of non-party elections, and the voting restricted to the 80,000 BD members who were to be elected by the local voters.
Neither the President, nor his chosen ministers were made responsible to the new Assembly. The Assembly’s powers were to be restricted, especially in relation to financial matters. The President’s powers were almost unlimited. His veto could not be overridden even by two-thirds majority, for he could refer any bill in question to a referendum to his chosen electorate —the 80000 BD members of Pakistan. Chaudhry Mohammad Ali, virtual father of the Constitution that General Ayub Khan had abrogated, commented: “It will be a government of the President by the President, and for the President”.
The proposed Constitution did not meet unanimous approval despite support from those quarters who had been dismayed and disgusted with the so-called system of “the Government of the people, by the people and for the people”.
In his Radio broadcast to the Nation, General Ayub Khan said: “I believe in every word… and have complete faith in the whole Constitution”.
That was the period when a paradigm shift was about to take place in my career.
Let me admit here that my earlier University life romance with General Ayub Khan’s Martial law had lost much of its enthusiasm because of the subtle appeal of the Democratic idealism to which my mind was more powerfully exposed. To be honest I was drawn to both ideals— a revolutionary change brought about by a Messiah—and a tyranny-free order in which there was reasonable freedom of thought and action. Was the marriage of the two diagonally opposite ‘states of being’ possible? The question was always in my mind those days. It was a kind of paradox that was to take decades to get resolved in my mind.
