Morning News
19th May 1966
Mujib’s Six-point Initiated
At Behest Of Govt
-CH. MD. ALI
BAHAWALPUR, May 18 (APP): Chaudhri Md. Ali, Convenor of the Nizam-e-Islam Party said here yesterday that the National High command of the opposition parties stood for the restoration of complete democracy in the country.
He told a press conference here that only the parliamentary form of Government could you chsafe the interests and rights of the people and ensure solidarity and unity of the country.
He thought the presidential system of Government was not suited to the conditions and situation in Pakistan. Chaudhri Md. Ali was on a day’s visit to Bahawalpur in connection with organisational work of his party.
About the six-point programme of Mujibur Rahman, Ch. Md. Ali said, this programme was in fact “initiated at the behest of the Government with a view to diverting the attention of the public from the Tashkent Declaration and Kashmir problems. It was the Government, he said, that published the programme”.
He said, he favoured provincial autonomy as was granted in the 1956 Constitution and as was consistent with the integrity and unity of the country.
When his attention was drawn to a statement of the East Pakistan Governor, Mr. Abdul Monem Khan, stating that the existing economic disparity between East and West Pakistan was the creation of Ch. Md. Ali, he said this allegation is entirely baseless.
He said although it was well over ten years when he left the Government, almost all big projects in East Pakistan, whether they pertained to sugar industry, jute industry, newsprint. fertilisers of shipyards, were initiated of sanctioned by him.
To another question Ch. Mohammad Ali replied that there had been no increase in the rate of growth of industrial production during the last seven and a half years over the pre-Martial Law period, despite all claims by the Government. He said the Western countries were now willing to advance loans after the reconstruction of their war-shattered economies and despite these loans and increase of home resources there had been no increase in the industrial production index.
Addressing the Bahawalpur Bar Association Ch. Md. Ali said, the Government had throttled the Press through the creation of Press Trust, Advertisement Board, and by posing threats to newspapers.
Now, he said the Government was trying to subdue the lawyers because it did not want to establish the rule of law which was so dear to the lawyers.
He said unless the people or East Pakistan were given an equal share and equal participation in the political power of the country they would not satisfied. The people of East Pakistan felt that they were not given equal political right in the governance of the country he said.
He said, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Nurul Amin had told him that the people there felt that East Pakistan was a colony of West Pakistan. The Assemblies had no power. The Governors were agents of the President and as such, it was the President alone and not the people that rules the country, he said.
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