In view of such dissent and calls for secession in various parts of the country (particularly East Pakistan and the North-West Frontier Province), on October 7, 1958, Mirza declared the abrogation of the 1956 Constitution and Parliament and local assemblies were closed. and banned all political party activities. He declared the country under martial law; General Mohammad Ayub Khan was appointed as the head of martial law. Mirza claimed that it was his intention to lift martial law as soon as possible and draft a new constitution. On October 27, he swore in his new cabinet, appointing Ayub Khan as prime minister, and giving cabinet positions to three lieutenant generals. The eight civilian members of the cabinet included businessmen and lawyers, and one was a young newcomer. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a prominent landowner in Sindh. However, Ayub Khan saw his appointment as prime minister as an attempt by the president to end his military career and ultimately be forgotten. Clearly, the country could not afford to have two supreme rulers at the same time. Therefore, Ayub Khan decided that if he had to go, it had to be Mirza. On the night of October 27, Ayub Khan’s senior generals gave Mirza an ultimatum: either permanent banishment or prosecution by a military tribunal. Mirza immediately left for London and never returned to Pakistan. Shortly thereafter, Ayub Khan, who became Field Marshal, was proclaimed president.
Martial law lasted 44 months. During that time, many military officers took over important civil service posts. Many politicians were removed from public life by electoral authority (disqualification) orders. A similar purge was carried out among civil servants. However, Ayub Khan said Pakistan is not yet ready for a full-scale experiment with parliamentary democracy and that a period of oversight and honest government is needed before a new constitutional system is established. insisted. So he said,Basic Democracy’ consists of local and urban councils directly elected by the population that are involved in local governance and support grassroots development programs. Elections were held in January 1960, and what became known as the Basic Democratic Party was immediately called upon to support and thereby legitimize Ayub Khan’s presidency. Of the 80,000 basic Democrats, 75,283 expressed support. Basic democracy was a tiered system closely linked to bureaucracy, with basic democracy occupying the lowest rung of the ladder leading to administrative divisions (tehsils, or tahsils), districts, and departments of the country.
It soon became clear that the real power in the system lay with the bureaucrats who had dominated decision-making since colonial times. Nevertheless, basic democratic institutions were tied to U.S.-sponsored public works programs. This joint initiative aimed to give local residents responsibility for the development of their villages and municipalities. Self-reliance was the watchword of the entire program, and Ayub Khan, his advisers, and important donors believed that the arrangement could bring material benefits and perhaps even provide the people with an experience of self-government.
Ayub Khan also established a Constitutional Commission to advise on a form of government better suited to the country’s political culture, and his government introduced a number of reforms. Of particular importance was the Islamic Family Law Ordinance 1961. It restricted polygamy and strengthened women’s rights and protections. He also approved the development of a family planning program aimed at addressing Pakistan’s population growth dilemma. Such actions angered the more conservative and religiously inclined members of society, who also expanded the ranks of the opposition. Under pressure to make amends and appease the guardians of Islamic tradition, family planning programs were eventually abolished.
An important feature of Ayub Khan’s government was the increasing pace of economic growth. In the early stages of independence, the annual growth rate was less than 3%, barely exceeding the population growth rate. Just before the military coup, the growth rate was even smaller. During the Ayub Khan era, with help from external sources, especially the United States, the country accelerated its economic growth, reaching more than 6 percent annually by 1965. Development was particularly active in the manufacturing sector, but considerable attention was also given to agriculture. U.S. aid has been particularly notable in combating water extraction and salinity problems caused by irrigation in more important cultivation areas. In addition, plans were implemented to launch a “Green Revolution” in Pakistan, with the introduction of new hybrid varieties of wheat and rice with the aim of increasing yields.
Despite positive economic development, overall most of the investment went to West Pakistan, and the divide between East and West widened during this period. When Ayub Khan declared that it was his intention to build a second capital, or legislative capital, near Dhaka, after work had begun on building a new capital of Pakistan in Islamabad on his orders. , sought to answer Bengalis’ fears of becoming second-class citizens. , in East Pakistan. But even as construction began on the new second capital, it failed to appease Bengalis angered by Ayub Khan’s decision to abrogate the 1956 constitution, not hold national elections, and maintain martial law.
East Pakistanis had many grievances, but they never really believed that their goals and concerns could be realized under Ayub Khan’s military regime. Subsequent developments only enforced these beliefs. Water rights agreements signed with India and hydropower projects along the Indus River benefited Western powers, as did military agreements with the United States. Pakistan’s officer class was primarily from West Pakistan, all major army and air facilities were located there, and Karachi was also a much stronger base of operations in terms of naval capabilities than Chittagong in East Pakistan. .
In 1962 Ayub Khan promulgated another constitution. It was based on a strengthened, centralized political system that emphasized the president rather than the parliament, an indirectly elected president, and the country’s vice-ministerial tradition. Ayub had expected a new political system without political parties, but it was clear that political parties would be revived once parliament was convened and martial law was lifted. There, Ayub formed his own political party, the Congress Islamic League, but the country’s political life and its issues remained largely the same as in the pre-martial law era.
Ayub Khan won another official term as President of Pakistan in January 1965, albeit in an election in which only the Democratic Party voted. Fatima Jinnah, sister of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who ran on the ticket of the opposition United Party, opposed the election, making the election closer than expected. During election activities, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was said to have been a loyal member of Ayub Khan’s cabinet as foreign minister, promised in his speech to resolve the dispute over the dispute. The Kashmir issue will be resolved during President Ayub Khan’s term. Bhutto suggested that Kashmir would be liberated from Indian occupation through negotiations or, failing that, by force, but there was little indication that Ayub Khan approved of Bhutto’s declaration. Nevertheless, the foreign minister’s speech appeared to be a comfort to West Pakistan’s pro-Kashmir interests and a green light for the Pakistani military to begin planning operations in the disputed territory.
A new war over Kashmir soon began. Skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani forces along the Line of Control between the two areas of control intensified during the summer of 1965, and by September large-scale hostilities had broken out between the two neighbors. India’s strategy disrupted Pakistan’s plans, and New Delhi ordered its troops to attack all along the India-West Pakistan border, launch air raids on East Pakistan, and even threaten to invade the east. Pakistan’s military warehouses were soon depleted, and the situation was made worse by the US arms embargo on both countries, which affected Pakistan more than India. Ayub Khan had to consider ceasing hostilities.
Ultimately, Ayub Khan was forced to accept a UN-sponsored ceasefire and abandon Pakistan’s quest to resolve the Kashmir issue by force. Embarrassed and humiliated, Ayub Khan sees his efforts to build a new Pakistan ruined by a single failure, and is forced to attend a peace conference with Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent, Soviet Uzbekistan. I no longer get it. There, the two leaders were unable to reach a satisfactory agreement on their own, and the organizers forced them to sign a draft document prepared for them. At that point, Bhutto, who had accompanied Ayub Khan to the meeting, announced her desire to leave the leadership. Ayub Khan’s popularity had reached its lowest level and in Pakistan’s zero-sum political game, Bhutto expected to gain what the president had lost. Under pressure from Ayub Khan, Bhutto withheld her resignation, but soon broke with the president, joined the voice of the opposition, and eventually formed her own party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Ayub Khan never changed after signing the agreement. Tashkent Agreement. Currently facing the rise of the opposition led by Bhutto in West Pakistan. Mujibur Rahman of East Pakistan responded by arresting Ayub Khan and others. Recognizing that he could not run the country without some cooperation from politicians, Ayub Khan convened a meeting of opposition leaders and lifted the state of emergency that had ruled Pakistan since 1965. However, these concessions failed to appease the opposition. In February 1969, Ayub announced that he would not run in the presidential elections scheduled for 1970. Meanwhile, protests rose in the streets and strikes crippled the economy. The turmoil caused by unchecked discontent, especially in East Pakistan, spread to the western provinces, and all attempts to restore calm proved futile. One of the themes that sustained the demonstrators was that Ayub Khan had been in power too long and it was time for him to step down.
In March 1969, Ayub Khan announced his retirement and was appointed general. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan will succeed him as president. The country was again placed under martial law. Yahya Khan, like Ayub Khan before him, assumed the role of chief martial law administrator. Yahya Khan accepted the responsibility of leading the country and said he would rule Pakistan only until the national elections in 1970. Yahya Khan abolished Ayub Khan’s basic democratic system and abolished the 1962 Constitution. he also Legal Framework Order (LFO) dissolving the single unit of West Pakistan and reconstituting the four former provinces of Pakistan, namely, Punjab, Sindh, North West Frontier Province, and Balochistan. The 1970 elections were therefore not only aimed at restoring parliamentary politics to the country, but also at reestablishing the state political system. However, the LFO’s big dilemma was that dismantling the one-unit system would mean that parliamentary seats would be allocated to each state based on population. This meant that East Pakistan, with its large population, was allocated more seats than all the provinces of West Pakistan combined.
