Bhutto is Dead

ACCORD

8) BALUCHISTAN: That the army shall be recalled to the barracks in the Province of Baluchistan and immediate measures shall be initiated and implemented for the restoration of confidence in the public and the creation of circumstances necessary to enable the citizens to come back to their normal abodes for the purposes of the election. Adequate arrangements, financial and administrative, shall be made for the rehabilitation of all such persons and their families who had to abandon their homes in Baluchistan or who were injured or who lost their lives since February 1973.

9) Azad Kashmir: That the Azad Kashmir Assembly shall be dissolved on ______and the present President and the Prime Minister and the Ministers shall cease to hold office and a new care-taker President shall be appointed in consultation with the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference and shall be vested with the powers and functions of the Government of Azad Kashmir. Unilateral amendments made in the Azad Kashmir Constitution shall be repealed and fresh elections to the Azad Kashmir Assembly and the office of the President of Azad Kashmir shall be held on ______1977. Appointment on Election Commissioner and other arrangements shall be made with the arrangement of the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference.

10) Constitutional Amendments: That all amendments made in the Constitution of Pakistan including those effecting fundamental rights of the citizens of Pakistan, and restricting the jurisdiction and impairing judicial power of superior courts in Schedule B to this Accord shall be repealed forthwith by the national Assembly.

11) Withdrawal of Emergency: That the declaration of Emergency is withdrawn with effect from______ and all fundamental rights shall stand restored, and shall not be abridged, suspended or abrogated, nor shall a new Emergency be imposed for the duration of the Accord.

An extract from the 15-page charter of demands presented to then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, by PNA (an alliance party that had the strangest member including hardliner Islamic parties and Socialist parties, brought together by one political aim: Overthrow Bhutto) on 4th may, 1977

-0-
Pakistan as a country seems to be going around in circles. The dots on the periphery of the circle being the same familiar names ― Democracy, Islam, Army and so go on the dots. Another Bhutto died. This time the Bhutto was on the other side of the fence, but again paid the price for the fence with blood, price for a fence that they in many ways, helped build. Benazir Bhutto "Daughter of the East" is dead.

-0-

When Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto died, Kashmiri Muslims went into wild mourning. After all, he was the man who declared the thousand-year war of India in the UN assembly; "we will fight for a thousand years" were the resounding words.
I wonder what would be the reaction of Kashmiris the death of a Bhutto, this time.
Lest we forget, Benazir Bhutto came to power right at the time when trouble in Kashmir started. I remember seeing that scarf draped face scream about “azaadi” on PTV, scream "main Jagmohan ko baag baag mohan kar dungi" and now the last images that I got to see of her was of her screaming about freedom cry of Pakistan - “Democracy”. Nothing much changes in that country.

Kausar Niazi, a life long Bhutto family loyalist, remembers the night when the army led by General Zia staged a coup and, Bhutto and members of his cabinet were arrested. In the book Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan: The Last Days, originally published in Urdu with the title Aur Line Kat Gaie(And the Line went Dead), a work that can be called Naizi’s act of hero worship, he writes:

This was the beginning of that long night of the generals that started on the 55th july 1977 and continued till 1 January 1986. The dawn is yet not visible and the intelligentsia is still humming that verse from Faiz’s poem:
“This is not the dawn we had been longing for!”
All the same, what took place between the night of the 4th and 5th July, 1977 was not the start point of a Martial Law _ its foundations had been laid much earlier. As a poet has said: “Time nourishes it for years; an accident does not occur all of a sudden.”

Even the practice of invoking the holy name of Faiz is not new in that country. Nothing is new. Bhutto is Dead! It’s no News!

-0-

Extract quoted from
Chapter 11, Progress Towards Negotiations and PNA’s Formula for Conciliation, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan: The Last Days
By Kausar Niazi

-0-

Photograph:
19 year old Benazir Bhutto in Simla, where Pakistani president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi met for a summit, on June 28, 1972. She had recently celebrated her 19th birthday on June 21.
More Photographs of Benazir Bhutto at AOL

-0-

Suggested Read
A thought provoking series on troubled history of Pakistan by Mehmal