#Pakistan - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s legacy

By Syed I Husain

Whenever I read or listen to Bhutto’s legendary speech, no matter how hard I resist, it leaves me in tears...

So what if Dacca falls?

So what if the whole of East Pakistan falls?

So what if the whole of East Pakistan falls?

We will build a new Pakistan. We will build a better Pakistan.

Mr President you referred to the distinguished, Foreign Minister of India. How is he distinguished when his hands are full of blood, when his heart is full of venom? I extended a hand of friendship to him. I am talking as the authentic leader of the people of West Pakistan.

But he did not take cognizance of it. I say what Cato said to the Romans, Carthage must be destroyed. If India thinks that it is going to subjugate Pakistan, Eastern Pakistan as well as Western Pakistan, because we are one people, we are one state, then we shall say, Carthage must be destroyed.

We will fight for thousand years. India is intoxicated today with its military success. You want us to lick the dust. We are not going to lick the dust. I am not a rat. I have never ratted in my life. I have faced assassination attempts. I have faces imprisonments, I have always confronted crises. Today I am not ratting, but I am leaving your Security Council.

I find it disgraceful to my person and my country to remain here a moment longer, legalise aggression.

I will not be a party to it.

We will go back and fight.

My country beckons me…

Eighteen years old Benazir Bhutto was sitting just behind him.

You can take your Security Council.

Here you are. I am going. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto walked out of the Chamber vigorously.

This was the speech of Mr Bhutto in Security Council on December 15, 1971. On December 16 General Niazi surrendered. We surrendered because otherwise we’d have had to destroy the city between our two armies, said General Niazi.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto wrote to General Ziaul Haq from his death cell: Politics is not the illegal seizure of the state machinery. You take so much pride in being a soldier of Islam, an expression you stole from my speech at the Islamic Summit. Are you true to anyone and what have you learnt from the sacred principles of Islam? Does Islam teach you to break your oath? Islam teaches you the virtues of justice

Whenever I read or listen to this speech of Mr Bhutto, no matter how much I try, it leaves me in tears.

I was in high school when after almost five and a half years on July 5, 1977, General Muhammad Ziaul Haq suspended the constitution and imposed martial law and addressed the nation in the following words:

You must have learnt by now that the Government of Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has ceased to exist. I am grateful to the Almighty that the process has been accomplished smoothly and peacefully. I genuinely feel that the survival of this country lies in democracy and democracy alone.

My dear countrymen, I have expressed my real feelings and intensions, without the slightest ambiguity. I seek guidance from Almighty God and help and cooperation from my countrymen to achieve this noble mission. I also hope that the judiciary will extend wholehearted cooperation to me, CMLA General Zia concluded.

On July 14, 1977 in his first press conference he vowed that, my intention has all along been to lay a tradition that the Army will not meddle in politics, let the politicians decide things by themselves. I am there only for 90 days. I am very humble man. I say Islam has to be the cornerstone of this Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I am a Muslim by faith, by birth and by actions.

I declare once again that elections shall, InshaAllah be held in October, General Zia assured the nation on July 27, 1977.

Three days before he was forced to retire, CJ Yaqub Ali Khan had permitted Begum Nusrat Bhutto to file a petition in Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of her husband’s detention. However in the unanimous view of nine members Supreme Court, her petition to release her husband and his colleagues from prison was dismissed as not maintainable. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s trial for conspiring to murder Ahmed Raza Kasuri carried on.

During the trial Mr Bhutto said: An independent judiciary is the antithesis of Martial Law. An independent judiciary can only function under the umbrella of the Constitution and not under the shadow of the gun of a brown Duke of Wellington. An independent judiciary exists side by side with an executive chosen by the people and a legislature elected by them. But the people’s Executive is in jail, the assemblies have become as silent as the graveyards.

Can one flower flourish in a garden turned into a desert?

Benazir Bhutto attended her father’s trial religiously, she was relieved to learn that none of the shells picked up by the investigating police around the site of Kasuri’s ambush fit any of the FSF weapons that were supposed to have been used in the attempted murder. When she told this news to her father, he replied to his excited daughter gently. They are going to kill me. It doesn’t matter what evidence you come up with. They are going to murder me for a murder I did not commit.

In March, 1978, Maulvi Mushtaq and his whole bench found Zulfikar Ali Bhutto guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto wrote to General Ziaul Haq from his death cell: Politics is not the illegal seizure of the state machinery. You take so much pride in being a soldier of Islam, an expression you stole from my speech at the Islamic Summit. Are you true to anyone and what have you learnt from the sacred principles of Islam? Does Islam teach you to break your oath. Islam teaches you the virtues of justice.

What justice can I expect from you? My persecution, which is without parallel in the contemporary history of the sub-continent, is a matter of public knowledge. The day of accounting awaits every individual. I have no doubt that you will be taken to the doors of Lal Shahbaz Qalander for the blood you spilt. I would be a dishonest coward if I did not tell you how determined are my people to see the dawn of that day.

The sun had died down and the final appeal had been denied. At 2:00 am on April 4, 1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was brought from his death cell to the gallows and hanged by the neck until pronounced dead. It appears that we have not learned anything from the history and it feels sometimes that we are still living in the 1970s and 1980s struggling to win democratic Supremacy, we are fighting hard for an independent judiciary. I recollect the words of Ms Asma Jahangir; for a flawed democracy we need more democracy. We must not impart up the struggle for a prosperous and democratic Pakistan.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto lives on and he always will!