Yahya’s unending search for a credible successor
KARACHI, SEPT. 3.- Two months after General Yayha Khan’s speech of June 28 pledging transfer of power in Pakistan and half-way to the mark of “four months or so” which he set for the resumption of civilian rule, the President has not yet found a credible politician or party to take over from him.
“I shall transfer power to the first man I see on the morning of October 27,” Yahya Khan is reported to have told several West Pakistani Politicians. October 27 comes four months after the June speech.
The remark, possibly apocryphal but going round in Pakistan, is intended to indicate the exasperation of the President after months of effort to find a civilian ruler.
The “menage a trois” he hoped to set up with the three Muslim Leagues will not come together. Appetite for a dominant role of each of these incompatible bedfellows is too strong. Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto will not do, though the former Foreign Minister has come out of his successive talks with the President repeating the remark: “The discussions are going on satisfactorily”. This is viewed as a means of holding in line Bhutto’s own impatient party men who have promises to keep.
The top echelons of the Army, the industrialists and the bureaucracy— Pakistan’s tripod of power will not support Mr. Bhotto’s radical policies. But he has some sympathy with General Gul Hassan and has won support among younger officers.
With General Tikka Khan, he head hawk, back in West Pakistan after being replaced as governor of the eastern wing by Dr. Abdul Muthalib Mullick, Pakistan’s political situation becomes less predictable than before. There is a strong group of generals and officials and politicians like Khan Abdul Quauyum Khan, who were defeated in the elections who do not want a transfer of power.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 4.9.1971