background to the coup in pakistan
Ofine in the country skily-y in Pistory. for the chi do
in 1958 and the military dictator, General Ayub Khan, ruled for eleven years before being overthrown by a mass uprising. The second period of military rule, in the early 1970s, was shorter, but led to the disintegration of the Pakistani state with the establishment of Bangladesh in what had been East Pakistan. What will the third period of military rule bring to a poor country whose masses have had to subsist on a steady diet of demagogy and religion for more than two decades? On the face of it, the army takeover was designed to break the political deadlock between Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the opposition Pakistan National Alliance (PNA). In our opinion this was not the major reason for the coup, but was simply the symptom of a rising crisis within the army itself. It is now clear that many officers — especially majors, captains, and lieutenants — were becoming increasingly tense and disgusted with the political situation. The political sympathies of most of these officers are with the right-wing religious groups. Religion acts as a cloak which shields them from radical ideas and simultaneously provides them with a political and moral cover. Bhutto's high living and the corruption prevalent on every level of society, which increased manifold under the Bhutto regime, fanned the flames of their discontent. They wanted a real blood purge to "cleanse" society. But many of these young officers found the job of shooting demonstrators for Bhutto highly distasteful. It is quite possible that some of them were planning a revolt which would have been a bloody affair. They were, however, preempted by General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, the chief martial law administrator under the new military regime. It remains to be seen whether Zia will organize an election on October 7 as scheduled or whether the taste of absolute power will induce him to look for other solutions. Much will depend on the mass movement. The opposition has in effect welcomed the coup, but the mass movement was not at all completely dependent on the PNA. On July 10, when the military government imposed "Islamic law, " a PNA source was quoted as saying that the action "shows that the army, or someone in it, is ambitious. They're seeking popular support instead of just maintaining discipline while preparing fresh elections. " The imposition of "Islamic 20
From Bhutto to Zia
law" had been one of the major demands of the PNA itsel Sections of the PPP, on the other hand, are quite capable of attempting passive resistance to the military regime, although Bhutto himself remains under "protective custody" in the city of Murree. In any event, Zia will want to ensure an evolution that will keep his junior officers placated for the time being. This could be done through a PNA election victory that would give the obscurantist Jamaat-i-Islam (Party of Islam) seats in the new government. On the other hand, the young officers might well decide that they would rather stay in power to clean up the "mess made by politicians." If that happens a second and more vicious coup cannot be ruled out. An extended period of military rule, however, would lead to the disintegration of Pakistan. The reason is simple: The two large national minorities are unlikely to tolerate a third period of martial law for long. The Baluchis and Pathans who inhabit Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province respectively are already in political opposition. If elections are not held on October 7 they are likely to oppose the army. Because of the strategic location of the provinces in question (the North West Frontier Province borders Afganistan and Baluchistan borders Iran), any unrest in them tends to affect neighboring countires. The shah has announced many times that he is prepared to intervene militarily to prevent "instability in the region. " Then, of course, there is India, whose government would also be unhappy if the situation in Pakistan remained unsettled. What is therefore at stake is not simply whether or not there will be a general election, but the future of the country itself. Whether or not Bhutto and the other imprisoned politicians are released will be an important indication of Zia ul-Hag's intentions, for an election would require their release. Zia has the reputation of a "professional soldier, " but so did Yahya Khan, the last military ruler, who attempted to drown Bangladesh in blood. Zia's hands are already none too clean. He commanded Pakistani mercenaries who fought on the side of Jordan's King Hussein during the September 1970 war in Jordan and was decorated by Hussein for his services. On becoming army chief of staff in 1976, Zia announced that the slogan for his troops would be "Faith, Abstinence, and Holy War. " The first virtue was abundantly displayed in Jordan in 1970. The second may lead to a ban on liquor in army messes, and the only people Zia could fight a "holy
war" against would be the people of Pakistan, for to attempt it against India would sound the death knell of Pakistan. The generals are thus embarked on a dangerous course. Their temporary salvation lies in promoting a right-wing government, but even that would not solve the underlying problems, the old problems of land, bread, and shelter. The new coup thus signals a period of instability in Pakistani politics. Exactly where it will lead cannot be predicted with any precision at the moment. The article below explains the roots of the crisis that broke out last March and the evolution of the conflict that led to the army coup. -Tariq All by Khaled Hassan held in Pakistan last January 7, no political observer in hen Bhutto announced that general elections would be the country could have predicted the turn events would take. Bhutto was quite confident that given the political and economic circumstances that prevailed at the beginning of 1977, his Pakistan People's Party (PPP) would win the elections hands down, probably with a thumping majority. Otherwise he could have postponed the elections for at least a year, in spite of the protests of the opposition parties, without seriously damaging his "popularity" among the masses. But Bhutto felt that he was in command of the overall situation. There was relative calm in the economic sphere, a patchwork of reforms having been implemented in an effort to placate various sections of the population. Bhutto's token reforms Between 1972 and 1976 land reforms were announced in three successive phases. They involved five essential points:
1. The ceiling on land ownership was lowered;
2. Taxes on subsistence-sized farms, those up to 12.5 acres (5 hectares) were abolished;
3. Income taxes were levied on large agricultural incomes, those generated by farms of more than 25 acres (10 hectares);
4. Agricultural credit was expanded;
5. The landlords were compelled to pay for seeds and for the tenants' share of government dues. Similar sops were offered other sectors of society through labor, administrative, and judicial reforms, as well as the "betterment" of the position of women and minorities. During the first phase of these reforms, extensive nationalizations were ordered in such fields as heavy and light engineering, cement, fertilizers, petrochemicals and petroleum, automobiles, shipbuilding, steel, banking, and life insurance. These were followed by phased takeovers of rice and cotton exports, all major imports, production of vegetable oil, flour milling, cotton ginning, and rice husking, the last of which was ordered as recently as July 1976.
The reforms and nationalizations had varying effects on the country's ruling classes, the land owning class in the countryside and the merchants and capitalists in the cities. A wide range of industrial sectors previously open to private entrepreneurs were closed to them. Moreover, profit maximization through intensification of exploitation, which would have been possible in the contracting industrial field, was initally barred. The nationalization of the banks extended credit facilities to a wider layer of the population, especially petty-bourgeois layers interested in small entrepreneurial operations, and this did reduce the monopolistic hold of certain very powerful bourgeois families on financial facilities. On the other hand, most of the nationalized industries had high liabilities (mainly debts to the banks), and capital investment by the proprietors was quite small. Nationalization shifted all these liabilities to the state and did not seriously affect the industrialists otherwise. The aim of the nationalizations was to establish a state monopoly in some sectors and to centralize and concentrate capital in major industries. Arbitrary price increases were announced periodically after nationalization in order to maintain substantial profits, which could subsequently be used as investment surplus. Centralization was used to rationalize various industries, and concentration of capital was intended to serve as an additional basis for industrial expansion. Thus, the regime simply carried out those tasks which were required by the crisis of the Pakistani economy; it acted on the behalf of the bourgeoisie, defending the long-term interests of the capitalist class. Nonetheless, the tariffs, fiscal policies, and bureaucratic control of industry did contribute to alienating those sectors of the bourgeoisie which had been affected. As for the landlords, they were able to sidestep the agrarian reform through such time-honored manipulative techniques as fictitious nominal land transfers and maintenance of the dependency of poor peasants and tenants. In fact, the benefits of the "green revolution" were reaped mainly by the biggest landlords and richest farmers, who were able to compete most effectively by making the greatest use of favors from officials for credit, fertilizers, permits for tractors, etc. The biggest landlords thus remained staunch supporters of the PPP. The bourgeoisie, however, tended to adopt a different attitude. Just at the time when the textile industry, which produced the major export commodity, was in deep crisis because of inflationary pressures and the world recession, Bhutto raised the export duty on cotton, making Pakistani cotton thoroughly uncompetitive on the world market. The government rapidly reversed itself, but the political damage had been done, the textile bourgeoisie withdrawing its confidence in the regime. The later nationalizations of the flour milling, rice husking, and cotton ginning enterprises, most of them owned by middle bourgeois layers, led to the further defection of broad sectors of the bourgeoisie. A deep economic crisis More generally, the Pakistani economy has been drifting downhill ever since 1972. Imports soared during 1973-75
21
PAKISTAN and have risen steadily since then, while exports have remained almost stagnant. The trade balance deficit thus rose from $52.5 million in 1971-72 to $1,091 million in 1975-76. The evolution is illustrated in Table 1. As of 1975-76 exports were not even able to finance 50% of imports. And forecasts for exports remain bleak. To begin with they are uncompetitive on the world market; in addition, production in large-scale manufacturing of exportable items has been consistently low. (In cases where exports have risen, it is because of increases in unit sales prices and not in volume). Table 1 Balance of Trade Year Exports* Imports* Balance* 1971-72 590.7 638.2 -52.5 1972-73 817.3 797.2 +20.1 1973-74 1,026.4 1,370.7 -344.3 1974-75 1,039.0 2,113.7 -1,074.7 1975-76 1,000.0 2,191.0 -1,091.0 *In millions of dollars (Source: Pakistan Economist) A second factor that has had an important effect on the economy has been "defense" spending. In 1961 it stood at $1,112.4 million, or 3.1% of gross national product. By 1971 it had risen to $3,201.5 million, or 3.7% of GNP. By 1975 it had soared to $5,579 million, or 15% of GNP. During the fiscal year 1975-76 a total of 71% of non-development government spending went for defense (49%) and debt servicing (22%), leaving scant resources for other uses. It may therefore be concluded that broad sectors of the urban bourgeoisie and the merchants and some affected ruling groupings in the countryside began to feel that the PPP government was no longer serving their immediate interests and went over to the opposition bloc, the Pakistan National Alliance. (The PNA is a bloc of nine organizations; see box.) The PNA had indicated in its program that if it came to power it would undo some of the "reforms" of the PPP. The general lack of bourgeois confidence in the Bhutto government was reflected in wariness to invest in industry, as is indicated in Table 2. In real terms private investment in 1975-76 was beneath its 1970-71 level. Most of the declines have occurred in large- and small-scale manufacturing, transport and communications, construction, pharmaceuticals, and petroleum and coal products. At the same time, the masses - the lower petty bourgeoisie, the rural poor, and the workers - were moving into opposition to the PPP. It is true that some workers, mainly those in the nationalized sectors, did benefit from job security, better pay, and improved working conditions under the Bhutto government. But such workers were far weaker numerically than those thrown out of work by the contraction of production in the private sector and by the lack of expansion of productive investment there. The millions of constantly 22 unemployed workers in the cities provided a base of seething discontent. In addition, inflation has driven down the already low living standards of all the toiling people. There have been enormous increases in the prices of essential goods such as consumer and food items, transit fares, gas, paraffin oil, electricity, cement, freight, etc. The merchants and industrialists have passed these various increases on to the toiling population, thus preserving their own profits. Although the PPP tried to bring about nominal wage increases, there was no serious attempt to offset even a significant percentage of the cumulative price rises. Table 2 Private Industrial Investment (millions of dollars) Year 1970-71 1,224 1971-72 1,016 1972-73 763 1973-74 698 1974-75 990 1975-76 1,093 (Source: Pakistan Economist) The situation for the PPP was no better in the countryside. The govemment had employed discriminatory pricing policies, which benefitted black marketeers, hoarders, and smugglers. Agricultural credit was granted primarily to the more prosperous landlords and not to the poor peasants, not only because of the formers'. credit worthiness, but also because of their social connections to the banking bureaucracy. Tenant farmers and poor peasants continued to be ousted from their land throughout the reign of the PPP, with the connivance of the local administration. While there is a minimum wage in industry, their is no legal minimum for rural laborers, which makes them the most oppressed among the population. Repression and the national question The masses would have exploded long ago but for the savage repression Bhutto had implemented since the downturn and defeat of the working-class struggle in 1972. Legal machinery was framed to provide for mass layoffs of workers. Trade-union organizations opposed to the PPP have been physically smashed by hoodlums and thugs hired specially for this purpose. In other cases union leaderships have been bought off through privileges and material benefits handed out in exchange for political loyalty. More generally, democratic rights were sharply curtailed throughout the period 1972-76. Press censorship was exercised through the publications ordinance. Draconian laws were passed withdrawing freedom of speech, expression, and organization. Corruption in the state bureaucracy has reached new and unprecedented proportions.
Regional inequalities persist and have been perpetuated economically, resulting in mass dissatisfaction among the peoples of the oppressed nationalities, Sindhis, Baluchis, and Pathans. The status quo has been maintained by means of extreme repression against those nationalities which have resisted their oppression. In fact, upon taking power Bhutto had made it quite clear that he would not tolerate a repetition of Bangladesh in Baluchistan or any other area of Pakistan. To forestall this eventuality he pitted four army divisions equipped with the most modern weapons against the Baluchi population of 2.5 million. The resources involved (estimates are that it costs nearly a million dollars a day to keep the army in Baluchistan) have caused a huge drain on the economy. But the national question as it is now posed in Baluchistan is actually fundamental to the very existence of Pakistan, for the resistance of the Baluchi people in spite of the armed force arrayed against them challenges the "two nation theory" (that there is a Muslim nation in Pakistan and a Hindu nation in India) on which the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent and the formation of Pakistan was based, It highlights the fact that Pakistan is a multinational state composed of Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans, and Baluchis in which the Punjabis (who constitute 60% of the total) dominate and oppress the other three nationalities. This domination is effected through the Punjabi ruling class's control of the state apparatus, including the military, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, etc. The economic wealth of the oppressed nationalities is used for the development of the Punjab; the cultural expressions of the oppressed nationalities are forbidden. Thus, when Bhutto took stock of the situation at the beginning of the year, he did not realize how much opposition to his rule lay hidden under the severe repression. Accurate information about Bhutto's real "popularity!" among the masses was unable to reach him, for the repression had effectively closed the very channels through which such information could have been amassed. In addition, with the bourgeois opposition parties in disarray, the PPP seemed the best organized party on a countrywide scale. Finally, the candi-. dates Bhutto selected to run for National Assembly seats on the PPP lists were people who could be expected to be able to run up big votes on the basis of their personal influence over the electorate because of their social position, caste rank, or financial resources. The rigged elections Even though Bhutto was confident that the 1977 general elections were merely a formality to ensure his rule for the coming five years, he was careful to take steps to see to it that there would be no minor hitches in the actual voting. He closed all schools and colleges indefinitely to guarantee that the students, who had been instrumental in bringing down Ayub Khan in 1969, would be unable to organize against him. The election commission, which organized and conducted the campaign, was packed with loyal PPP supporters from the judiciary and the bureaucracy. Realizing that the elections had become a life-or-death question for them, the nine opposition parties banded together in the Pakistan National Alliance. Broadly speaking, the PNA campaign was based on two key issues: the institution of "Islamic law" in all social spheres and the restoration of democratic rights. Bhutto was able to preempt the PNA on the first issue. In the domain of foreign policy he cultivated close relations with a number of Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Iran, Kuwait, and Indonesia. Domestically, he declared the adiani ( a small local Muslim sect) non-Muslim, thus depriving "orthodox" Muslims of a rallying cry they had been using for thirty years or so. He liberalized the government's policy on travel for the pilgrimage to Mecca and ostentatiously declared his fidelity to Islam. On the question of restoration of democratic rights, however, Bhutto did not budge an inch. He had no answers to the problems of land, inflation, unemployment, housing, and health and education, which were the issues which had been generating unrest among the masses. He refused to lift the state of emergency or abolish any of the repressive laws even during the two months preceding the elections. (The only exception was the law forbidding assemblies of more than five people, which was relaxed, along with press censorship.) Throughout the election campaign Bhutto and the PPP did all they could to guarantee that the opposition would have no chance of victory. The government-controlled radio and television networks inundated their audiences with PPP propaganda and caricatured the opposition. News was carefully sifted, and no criticism of Bhutto was permitted. There was virtually no coverage of the PNA campaign, which became most anomalous when the rally of one million people greeting PNA leader Asghar Khan in Karachi was not even mentioned in the news. Trucks, cars, and other vehicles normally used for official work were requisitioned for the PPP campaign, financed by the state treasury. But even this was not enough. The repressive apparatus was brought into play too. In the constituencies contested by Bhutto and other major PPP leaders, prospective PNA candidates were threatened with dire consequences if they went through the nominating procedure. Jan Muhammad Abbasi, a PNA member who dared try to oppose Bhutto himself in the town of Larkana (Bhutto's home town in Sind), was kidnapped by the police before he could present his nomination papers and was released only after the filing deadline had passed. Thus, more than twenty PPP candidates ran unopposed. For its part, the PNA had difficulties in launching its own campaign in any case. There was considerable doubt that the nine parties would be able to hold together despite their many internal contradictions. But two features of the PNA campaign enabled them to draw the masses behind them: their massive emphasis on the restoration of democratic rights and their more general ability, in the absence of any other alternative, to capitalize on the widespread anti-Bhutto sentiment among the masses. By the second week of February the opposition's campaign in the Punjab and the urban areas
PAKISTAN of Sind was beginning to draw significant numbers of people to its rallies. The PNA called for boycotting the elections in Baluchistan unless the army was withdrawn, but in Punjab, Sind, and the North West Frontier Province it appeared that support for the PNA was mounting. Thus, on the eve of the elections, the results were considered in doubt, in spite of all the measures that had been taken by Bhutto up to then. Bhutto realized this and decided to take additional precautions: He made massive administrative arrangements to rig the balloting. This became obvious as soon as the first results began to come in - from the rural areas, where the vote could not possibly have been counted, let alone communicated to the mass media, as quickly as the results were broadcast. Results from the large cities, like Karachi and Lahore, did not come in until midnight. The announced results were stunning, the PPP taking 168 seats in the National Assembly to 38 for the PNA; the PPP took 107 of the 115 seats in the Punjab. Bhutto's henchmen had been overzealous. The vote had been too obviously rigged, and the PNA protested immediately, denouncing the elections as a fraud. The PNA parties demanded fresh elections under the supervision of the army and judiciary and also announced that they would boycott the elections to the provincial assemblies. Bhutto denied that there had been extensive fraud, rejected the demand for new elections, and stated his intention to proceed to the provincial elections with or without the participation of the opposition. These were held on March 10, and the PNA-called boycott was a clear success, thus exposing the fraudulence of the previous National Assembly vote. The PNA immediately demanded Bhutto's resignation, the dissolution of the National Assembly, and new elections under a reconstituted impartial election commission. The masses rebel On March 11, the day after the provincial elections, a massive general strike broke out in Karachi. Striking workers marched in the streets, along with masses of the lower petty bourgeoisie. The demonstrators were attacked by the repressive forces and a curfew was declared; the police were ordered to shoot to kill violators on sight. Bhutto, who had already rejected the demands of the PNA outright, found himself in a position from which he could not retreat. The majority of the PPP National Assembly members, who had been elected through wholesale fraud, put additional pressure on him not to yield, since their own survival was intimately linked to Bhutto's. The PNA leaders also found themselves in a delicate position. Their mass support, already going beyond them in action, forced them to take a firm stand against Bhutto and prevented them from compromising on their central demands. Bhutto decided to break the impasse through further repression. The leaders of the PNA were arrested and the mass movement was met with escalating armed force. But the movement had already gone too far and could not be easily broken by repression. The first major protests had erupted in Karachi 24 and Hyderabad. By the end of the first week of April, however, the masses were taking to the streets even in the small market towns of the Punjab. On April 8 and 9 the PNA held several demonstrations in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, to protest against the convening of the "illegal" provincial assembly. The police, the Field Security Forces, and the army turned the streets into a battlefield. By the end of the day on April 9 more than thirty people had been killed. Martial law was declared in Karachi, Hyderabad, and Lahore, and the curfew was extended to other cities in the Punjab. The repression steadily intensified as the movement spread. More than a thousand people were killed, more than 10,000 wounded, and perhaps as many as 100,000 imprisoned, many of them subjected to brutal torture. The jails were filled to capacity and schools were occupied and transformed into jails, interrogation centers, and torture chambers. At the same time, Bhutto tried to negotiate with the PNA leaders. First he offered to hold new elections to the provincial assemblies and said that if the PNA won an aggregate majority the National Assembly would be dissolved and new elections would be held. When this was rejected he accused the PNA of working hand in hand with a CIA conspiracy to overthrow him. By that point, however, his credibility with the masses had fallen too low for this argument to have any effect. He next offered to hold a referendum on whether the people wanted him to remain as prime minister. The PNA also rejected that offer, and it had no effect in calming the mass movement. Emissaries were then sent from Saudi Arabia and Libya in an attempt to negotiate an end to the PPP-PNA dispute: As the negotiations proceeded, Bhutto attempted to coopt various aspects of the PNA platform. He ordered a ban on alcohol, gambling, and nightclubs and announced the formation of a broad-based Islamic advisory council to devise ways of bringing the constitution and laws of the coun try into conformity with the tenets of Islam as interpreted by Pakistani Islamic authorities. Economically, he raised the wages of government employees, who constitute a large sector of the country's wage earners, and he denationalized 1,521 of the approximately 2,000 rice-husking production units that had been nationalized in July 1976, an attempt to win over sections of the petty-bourgeois base of the PNA. What he did not do and could not do was restore democratic rights, for that would have opened the floodgates of demands which specifically concern the toiling people, including the poor peasantry. This in turn would have led to even broader mobilizations which would have placed the entire capitalist system in question. In fact, he tried to prevail upon the bourgeois good sense of the PNA leaders, openly stating that they did not realize the forces they were toying with, forces they themselves might well have to confront antagonistically if the crisis persisted. This became an especially important argument of Bhutto after the general strikes of April 20, which were the largest ever in the history of the country. But in spite of this argument's appeal to the PNA leaders, they had come to realize that the issue of restoration of democratic rights and not the institution of Islamic law was the central issue in the mobilization. They thus found themselves under heavy mass pressure not to com-
promise with Bhutto on this point, for compromise would have raised the threat of their losing control over the mobilizations completely. As for Bhutto, he behaved in the characteristic bonapartist fashion. He consciously endeavored to concentrate maximum executive power in his own hands. He packed the mass media, the state bureaucracy, and the armed forces with loyal agents. The repressive apparatus was expanded enormously. The powers of the judiciary were curtailed through various changes in legislation and the constitution was amended at will. Parliament was transformed into a mere rubber stamp. For most of the six years of his rule, Bhutto governed by decree. Even the relatively small bourgeois opposition was not tolerated. This entire process was accompanied by leftist demagogy and some token concessions to sections of the masses. But when the population as a whole began to challenge the system of rule shaped over the past six years, the regime responded with force and tried to hold the line against granting concessions even to the bourgeois opposition. The failure of negotiations The three months of street fighting and mass mobilizations that went on from mid-March to mid-June (while nine successive rounds of talks between the PPP and the PNA broke down) became progressively more costly to the ruling class and the Bhutto government both economically and politically. The pressures for a negotiated settlement to break the deadlock became increasingly irresistable. "By the government's admission, " commented Salamat Ali in the July 1 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, "industry is not yet back to normal. Prolonged agitation would have increased the number of idle factories and business houses, causing unbearable losses to the economy. A return to normal at the earliest has become imperative also because the labour force, hit by soaring inflation, is restless. Higher wage demands could start soon. "The country's failing cotton crop and steadily increasing cost of imports, coupled with a significant loss of domestic production, demand economic measures that cannot be taken in the present political climate. Further, pressure is generated by new industrial projects that take a long time to begin and several of which. are consuming sizable investments diverted from a starved social sector. Bhutto has stubborly refused to re-schedule these projects. " Under all these pressures, and with the Saudi Arabian and Libyan intervention, Bhutto was finally compelled to concede to some of the PNA's major demands. On June 15 an agreement was signed entailing the following major points:
1. The National Assembly would be dissolved. New elections were called for October 7, with the election procedures to be worked out jointly by the PPP and the PNA.
2. The election commission would be reconstructed and a new chief election commissioner appointed.
3. Governor's rule would be declared in the four provinces of Pakistan immediately after the dissolution of the National Assembly; the chief justices of each of the four provinces would act as governors between the dissolution of the National Assembly and the October elections.
4. Release of the political prisoners arrested during the
March-June turmoil. Exactly how many prisoners would be released and how many would be held on "specific" charges was not made clear.
The two sides also agreed to administrative arrangements for counting the ballots in the October elections and the goverment agreed to grant the PNA increased access to the mass media during the campaign. There was only one major point on which Bhutto refused to yield: He would remain prime minster until the new elections.
The mid-June agreement appeared to have ended the PPP-
PNA deadlock. Both sides immediately began feverish preparation for the new elections. On June 18 some 10,000
PPP supporters gathered in Lahore in an unofficial opening of the campaign. A PNA procession was held in Lahore on the same day. But the social, economic, and political problems that had given rise to the months-long mass mobilizations remained unresolved. As the July 1 Far Eastern Economic
Review put it, "Responsible leaders in both camps fear urban unrest for some years irrespective of who wins the October polls."
This fear, undoubtedly exacerbated by the clear signs that the mass movement was not exhausted by its three-month battle and on the contrary threatened to take an active hand in the election campaign, was one of the factors that led the army to seize power on July 6.
RACE&
CLASS
Quarterly Journal of the Institute of Race Relations and the Transnational Institute
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Volume XIX
Summer 1977
Number 1
Jay O'Brien Tribe, class and nation: revolution and the weapon of theory in Guinea-Bissau
Saghir Ahmad Population myths and realities
Michael Morgan Britain's imperial strategy and the
Malayan labour movement 1945-50
Race & Class correspondents Elections in the subcontinent
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