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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Pakistan
Index
In 1958 Ayub Khan had promised a speedy return to
constitutional government. In February 1960, an
eleven-member
constitutional commission was established. The
commission's
recommendations for direct elections, strong legislative
and
judicial organs, free political parties, and defined
limitations
on presidential authority went against Ayub Khan's
philosophy of
government, so he ordered other committees to make
revisions.
The 1962 constitution retained some aspects of the
Islamic
nature of the republic but omitted the word Islamic
in its
original version; amid protests, Ayub Khan added that word
later.
The president would be a Muslim, and the Advisory Council
of
Islamic Ideology and the Islamic Research Institute were
established to assist the government in reconciling all
legislation with the tenets of the Quran and the sunna.
Their
functions were advisory and their members appointed by the
president, so the ulama had no real power base.
Ayub Khan sought to retain certain aspects of his
dominant
authority in the 1962 constitution, which ended the period
of
martial law. The document created a presidential system in
which
the traditional powers of the chief executive were
augmented by
control of the legislature, the power to issue ordinances,
the
right of appeal to referendum, protection from
impeachment,
control over the budget, and special emergency powers,
which
included the power to suspend civil rights. As the 1965
elections
showed, the presidential system of government was opposed
by
those who equated constitutional government with
parliamentary
democracy. The 1962 constitution relaxed martial law
limitations
on personal freedom and made fundamental rights
justiciable. The
courts continued their traditional function of protecting
the
rights of individual citizens against encroachment by the
government, but the government made it clear that the
exercise of
claims based on fundamental rights would not be permitted
to
nullify its previous progressive legislation on land
reforms and
family laws.
The National Assembly, consisting of 156 members
(including
six women) and elected by an electoral college of 80,000
Basic
Democrats, was established as the federal legislature.
Legislative powers were divided between the National
Assembly and
provincial legislative assemblies. The National Assembly
was to
hold sessions alternatively in Islamabad and Dhaka; the
Supreme
Court would also hold sessions in Dhaka. The ban on
political
parties was operational at the time of the first elections
to the
National Assembly and provincial legislative assemblies in
January 1960, as was the prohibition on "EBDOed"
politicians.
Many of those elected were new and merged into factions
formed on
the basis of personal or provincial loyalties. Despite the
ban,
political parties functioned outside the legislative
bodies as
vehicles of criticism and formers of opinion. In late
1962,
political parties were again legalized and factions
crystallized
into government and opposition groups. Ayub Khan combined
fragments of the old Muslim League and created the
Pakistan
Muslim League (PML) as the official government party.
The presidential election of January 1965 resulted in a
victory for Ayub Khan but also demonstrated the appeal of
the
opposition. Four political parties joined to form the
Combined
Opposition Parties (COP). These parties were the Council
Muslim
League, strongest in Punjab and Karachi; the Awami League,
strongest in East Pakistan; the National Awami Party,
strongest
in the North-West Frontier Province, where it stood for
dissolving the One Unit Plan; and the Jamaat-i-Islami,
surprisingly supporting the candidacy of a woman. The COP
nominated Fatima Jinnah (sister of the Quaid-i-Azam and
known as
Madar-i-Millet, the Mother of the Nation) their
presidential
candidate. The nine-point program put forward by the COP
emphasized the restoration of parliamentary democracy.
Ayub Khan
won 63.3 percent of the electoral college vote. His
majority was
larger in West Pakistan (73.6 percent) than in East
Pakistan
(53.1 percent).
Data as of April 1994
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