Reported offer By Yahya To Step Down
Bhutto Called Back From New York
NEW DELHI, DEC. 18 A NEW POWER PATTERN SEEMED TO BE EVOLVING IN ISLAMABAD TODAY WITH MR. Z. A. BHUTTO AS THE CENTRAL FIGURE ON THE CIVILIAN SIDE. BUT WHO WILL SYMBOLIZE THE ARMY’S OVERLORDSHIP IN THE NEW SET-UP WAS NOT CLEAR, THOUGH IT WAS CERTAIN THAT POWER HAD SLIPPED OUT OF GEN. YAHYA KHAN’S HANDS. THERE WAS NO CONFIRMATION HERE OF THE RUMOURS THAT GEN. TIKKHA KHAN MAY BE HIS SUCCESSOR.
Reports reaching here through diplomatic sources said Gen. Yahya Khan had offered to resign during last night’s meeting of the top it was not clear wrether his resignation had been accepted and he had actually stepped down.
The precise relationship between the civil and military personalities as also the shape of the new constitution set-up remained unclear.
Mr. Bhutto, Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, now in New York had been urgently summoned back home. An urgent message to him had gone from the “President” who was not identified by the official spokesman. Mr. Bhutto was perhaps being thought of for the post of Prime Minister, in place of Mr. Nurul Amin who had lost his utility as a “show boy” after the loss of Bangladesh to Pakistan. As leader of the majority party in the West Pakistan, Mr. Bhutto’s claim has acquired a new validity.
A new dimension to the confused interplay for forces was given by widespread demonstrations against the Yahya regime. The demonstrators stance, according to reports, was clearly pro Bhutto.
According to UNI the official announcement in Rawalpindi about summoning of Mr. Bhutto from New York also said that immediately on Mr. Bhutto’s return. power would be transferred to a representative Government under a new Constitution.
Mr. Nurul Amin, who is the United coalition Party leader and who had been named Prime Minister-designate early last week, has demanded that Gen. Yahya Khan should tender his resignation after installing a representative government.
Members of Mr. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and others took out processions in Lahore to give vent to their ire. The Lahore Bar Association called for Gen. Yahya Khan’s resignation through a formal resolution.
In Peshawar, demonstrators marched to the cantonment house built by Gen. Yahya Khan threatening to burn it down.
Observers noted that the Rawalpindi announcement spoke of a “representative” government, and not just “civilian” government. After the separation of Bangladesh, Mr. Bhutto’s party was the most powerful and most representative in the residuary State. It had won 82 of the 138 West Pakistan National Assembly elected in December last year.
They pointed out that if the military regime felt compelled to dump Mr. Amin now to mollify West Pakistani people who had been stunned by the total rout of their Army in the east, it would provide a way out of the unrealistic situation created by the choice of an outdated east-wing politician for leadership to keep up the pretence that Bangladesh did not exist.
Ironically, the observers said, the war might thus have brought a measure of democracy to the residuary State of Pakistan even as it had resulted in the ushering in of secular and socialist democracy in Bangladesh.
The Rawalpindi announcement gave no indication of the contents to the proposed new constitution. Gen. Yahya Khan had previously reserved for himself the right to reject any changes in the draft that might be proposed by the National Assembly.
The BBC said today that the Pakistani Government’s Press Information Department distributed a Constitutional documents to reporters yesterday but withdrew it later. The radio said the document was being revised.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 19.12.1971