Democracy—Bhutto Style

THE Bhutto brand of democracy is in essence an echo of the ill-fated scheme President Ayub Khan designed as a sop to liberal thought. In his first broadcast as President of Pakistan, Mr. Bhutto made out a strong case for restoration of democracy in his country. But the plan he has just revealed for a limited form of parliamentary government reflects his mental contradictions. While keeping his promise to make an early announcement, he has offered only the shadow while taking good care to retain the substance. During his years of political wilderness, he had consistently criticised the steps towards “democracy” which President Ayub Khan and later Gen. Yahya Khan disclosed with much fanfare. Gen. Yahya Khan’s politics, Mr. Bhutto said, were a “fraud...they were treacherous.” Yahya Khan wanted “seven or eight parties to come to power so that he could stand on top.” But Mr. Bhutto’s own plan conforms to the same pattern. Like his predecessors, he too distrusts other politicians and hence proceeds warily. Like them he has declined to lift martial law even while professing democratic intentions. Martial law and democracy stand poles apart. Elections to the newly christened local bodies in Pakistan are unlikely to be fair and free under the heels of the army. If anti-Bhutto forces capture the majority in these committees, Mr. Bhutto might quash them and repeat the Yahya Khan treachery practised in Dacca in March 1971. Yahya Khan had at any rate fixed the deadline for restoring various phases of popular rule. But Mr. Bhutto seems unwilling to take such risks. He has not indicated when he would discard the powers he assumed as President and Chief Martial Law Administrator on December 20. Nor is it known when the National Assembly, shorn of its dominant eastern quota, would meet.

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