By the last week of December 1971, Pakistan had already broken in two. Bangladesh had separated just four days earlier, and on 20 December, President Yahya Khan was forced out under pressure from the military top brass. With the army reeling from a crushing defeat in the war and choosing to step back from politics to rebuild its own strength, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the country's most prominent civilian politician, stepped into the vacuum, took over as president and set about assembling a new government.
Bhutto pitched himself as the man who would restore balance, promising a new Pakistan, a new constitution and a new system of governance. His vision briefly pulled together very different sections of society and gave a battered nation something to hope for. But that unity did not last long, because Bhutto's conduct, his attitude and his style of governing looked less like that of a people's leader and more like that of someone bent on tightening personal control.
From president to an all powerful prime minister
In 1973, a new constitution drafted under Bhutto and his aides was adopted, restoring a parliamentary system of government in the country. Under this new setup Bhutto treated the presidency as little more than a ceremonial post, so he gave it up and took charge instead as prime minister, a post that carried far more real power.
Building a security force around personal fear
Once he became prime minister, Bhutto began pushing for near total, unchecked control over the state, and his suspicion of the people around him kept growing. That mistrust led him to set up the Federal Security Force, or FSF, whose stated job was to protect him personally. Over time, though, the FSF grew into something closer to a paramilitary organisation.
Bhutto's ever growing demand for personal security raised serious questions about how he was governing the country, and it opened cracks inside his own party, the PPP. He is alleged to have started silencing and jailing his closest allies during this period. Even the younger generation, which had once treated Bhutto as an icon, found itself on the receiving end of police and FSF crackdowns, and university life was repeatedly disrupted as a result.
Nine opposition parties join hands in 1977
In 1977, Bhutto decided to hold the country's second national election. Nine opposition parties banded together to counter the PPP, forming a broad coalition called the Pakistan National Alliance, and agreed to contest the polls as a single bloc.
Rattled by the PNA's strength, Bhutto and his aides devised an election strategy that leaned on the FSF to intimidate the opposition. The PNA, however, refused to back down and instead sharpened its attacks on Bhutto and the PPP. The alliance also turned to a religious platform, accusing Bhutto of betraying Islamic practices, and called for a cleansing of politics and a return to basic Islamic principles.
A landslide that turned into riots
Despite everything it tried, the PNA lost badly, but the vote was anything but peaceful. Allegations of large scale rigging and fraud surfaced the moment results were declared, and voter anger quickly spilled onto the streets as violent protests and rioting.
Bhutto and his party had won a huge majority, but the riots that erupted in every major city turned that victory hollow. Disillusioned with the way Bhutto was running the country, the army stepped back into Pakistani politics, a role it had only just started stepping away from after 1971. That intervention has never really ended since, and Pakistani politics has remained under the army's shadow ever after. The military rejected the election results outright, placed Bhutto under house arrest and dissolved his government.
Zia ul Haq takes over, democracy is throttled
That set the stage for 5 July 1977, the day General Muhammad Zia ul Haq took complete command of the country, a man Bhutto himself had picked as army chief. Zia initially spoke of holding fresh, fairer and more transparent elections, but it soon became evident that the military had no intention of letting Bhutto return to power.
Bhutto was subsequently arrested on charges of ordering the murder of a political opponent, and General Zia pushed hard to have him tried for the alleged crime, effectively closing the book on the Bhutto era. What followed was the start of Zia ul Haq's military rule in Pakistan. That is the point from which the country's political troubles and the army's domineering grip trace back, a grip that has never really loosened. Democracy in Pakistan, even today, remains a slow, gasping affair.
