This year’s April 4th marked
the 34th death anniversary of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s founding chairman Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. On this day in 1979 Bhutto was executed by Ziaul Haq, the most brutal dictator in Pakistan’s history. However, if we compare the election manifestos of the PPP in the 1970 elections and that of 2013, there is a sea change in the economic, social and class policies in the two documents. The social and economic situation under this coalition regime led by the PPP has been abysmal. This is even acknowledged by some of the PPP’s own diehard apologists. The main assertion is that this government and the assemblies have completed their five-year tenures. Transition of democratic rule and transfer of power has been without the intervention of the army.
The major achievements parroted are amendments for devolution of power, abolition of the concurrent list and additional finances to the provinces, the charity programme (BISP) and some other cosmetic measures and enactments of new laws that are not really a concern for the vast majority of the toiling masses of the country. As far as military intervention is concerned it is no credit to the civilian rulers, but in fact the result of an unravelling conflagration in society that had destabilised the institutions of the state. The military top brass was aware of the fact that any direct military rule could shatter the institution itself. The internal and external wars with thousands of soldiers killed with very little success to show for it, public humiliation of the army and the drubbing of its image in the Osama bin Laden and other episodes were unprecedented and have exacerbated already acute tensions and sharpened conflicts within its own ranks. Imposition of martial law in such conditions would have disintegrated the whole edifice of the state.
The other reason for this ‘democratic’ transition was that all mainstream parties of the ruling elite had their fingers dipped deep in state power, resources and cash. Although on the surface they continuously bickered deafeningly, everyone had their stakes in this system of reconciliation for plunder. All wanted to preserve the system to continue and preserve their loot and privileges. Democracy was impersonated as a social and economic system. In a cynical construct a political formula has been substituted for a social and economic content. The PPP ever since it drifted away from its socialist origins has been championing the cause of this rotten bourgeois democracy. Even its main slogan, ‘Socialism is our economy’ was wiped out of the party’s programme. This democracy became its sociology, its economy, its ideology and its only policy. After Benazir Bhutto’s assassination the slogan put forward was yet again, ‘Democracy is the best revenge’.
It was a far cry from how Z A Bhutto had envisaged democracy during his struggle against the military dictatorship of Ayub Khan. He wrote, “Democracy is essential but not an end in itself. In the struggle to establish democracy we must not lose sight of the economic objectives, which remain paramount. Democracy must go hand in hand with enlightened socialism if the servitude of the people is to be ended. Socialism is the highest expression of democracy and its logical fulfilment.” To use Bhutto’s image to perpetuate the exploitative capitalist system in the name of democracy is a gross injustice to his legacy.
Bhutto has been accused of being a product of the Ayub dictatorship. But it was also Bhutto who challenged the despot, created a political party on radical, revolutionary socialist lines and finally succeeded in overthrowing military rule. Can the Sharifs who were the product of the most vicious dictator in Pakistan’s history claim to have challenged him? The same goes for Altaf Hussain and his Muttahida Qaumi Movement, many varieties of the Muslim League, and even the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami along with other Islamist parties. All these reactionary entities were created and nurtured by the dictatorship of Ziaul Haq and are the reactionary legacy of his fundamentalist and neo-fascist ideology.
During the 1960s it was only the PPP that called for a revolutionary change. The PPP’s founding documents were unambiguous: “The ultimate objective of the party’s policy was the attainment of a classless society that is only possible through socialism in our times.” What is also true is that the PPP was a very young party, with very rudimentary structures, no hardened and steeped Leninist cadres spread across the country at the time of the 1968-69 revolution. In his speech at the founding convention of the PPP on November 30, 1967, Bhutto said, “Beginnings of great movements were often modest and small.” The revolutions cannot wait for the building of revolutionary parties once they erupt in the arena of history.
After the 1970 elections, the war, breakup of Pakistan and the tumultuous events that were exploding, Bhutto and the PPP were given power to prevent another revolt on the streets. Unfortunately, Bhutto and the PPP leaders accepted power within the structures of the bourgeois state. In these conditions even if they wanted to transform the system it would not have been possible. Although most radical reforms for the oppressed were carried out in health, education and other sectors, the rotten Pakistani capitalism did not have the capacity to sustain those reforms. The economic crisis and hyperinflation destabilised the PPP government and the military with the support of US imperialism toppled Bhutto. Less than two years later he was assassinated to avenge his nationalisations and radical measures that had bruised the bourgeoisie.
In his last testimony from his death cell Bhutto wrote, “A via media, a modus vivendi, a compromise is a utopian dream. The coup d’état demonstrates that the class struggle is irreconcilable and that it must result in the victory of one class over the other.” This verdict and legacy haunts the incumbent leadership. Bhutto and his comrades at least strove for a socialist revolution. They made many mistakes but they accepted them and tried to rectify them in life and death. The pro-capitalist regimes of the PPP after Bhutto have desecrated the party’s socialist origins. The party’s status as a tradition of the toilers is in peril. The survival of the party now hinges on the will and determination of the new generation to complete the unfinished tasks left by the PPP’s origins. This depends on the party avoiding total collapse as a mass tradition and fragmentation into pieces. In such a scenario a new upheaval will create a fresh tradition that does not leave the task of carrying out the revolution unfinished.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]