Epi Weekly, The Legacy of Bhutto, 1978

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The Legacy of BhuttoSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 13, No. 13 (Apr. 1, 1978), pp. 574-575+578Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4366485

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April I, 1978 ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLYbership requirements for registration ofa union are proposed to be raised to10 per cent of the number of em-ployees in the unit subject to a mini-mum of ten. This should discouragethe multiplication of new splinterunions. In- fact, such requirementsshould be made applicable to unionsalready registered also and those notcoming upto them should be deregister-ed. That would weed out a fair num-ber of mushroom unions presently onthe register. On the other hand, iL -neworganising fields where workers startgetting organised for the first time, thehigher membership requirements mayprove to be a- genuine handicap anidcould be used by employers to thwartthe efforts to organise workers byresorting to victimisation. In suchfields, initial registration should bemade somewhat easier although withina stipulated period, say one year, thenewly formed union should be iequir-ed to come up to the minimum mem-bership norms or else forfeit its regis-tration.

There are also proposals to limitthe number of 'outsiders' among office-bearers of unions tq two at the unitlevel and 25 per cent of the membersof the executive committee in the caseof industrial unions, and to providethat no person can hold office in morethan four unions at a time. Both theseproposals are sound and should helpthe growth of sound trade unions.Every office-bearer of a union if he isan 'outsider' will have to file every yeara statement of his assets with the re-gistrar of trade unions. This, again, isa healthy idea although its actual effec-tiveness as an instrument to checkcurruption and malpractices amongtrade union officials may. be limitedconsidering the experience that similarrules- applicable to government em-ployees have contributed little towardspreventing curruption among thlem.A very dangerous 'suggestion, how-c-ver, is that an office-bearer of a unionwill be barred from holding office forupto two years if he is found to haveincited an illegal strike. In view of theother provisions which will make al-most any strike illegal no matter whatthe provocation or the facts of a case,this bar can be used in a most draco-nian way.The new proposals categorically ac-cept the principle that there shoualdbeone legally recognised negotiatingagent for workers in any given bargain-ing unit. But the specific provisions pro-posed in this regard raise serious dou-bts. There is nos stipulation that the

bargaining agent will be recognised onthe strength of majority support of theworkers expressed through secret bal-lot. The appropriate government is tobe empowered to accept for this pulr-pose evidence of workers' backing, toa union in the form of check-off autho-risation. This option to be exercisedby the government will almost certain-ly be used politically. It will leave thedoor open for collusion between em-ployers and particular unions with theconnivance, if not active support, ofgovernment in many cases to pressuriseworkers to sign check-off authorisa-tions or even to manipulate records toconfer bargaining status on unions notreally qualified for it.

For a union to get recognised as asole negotiating agent, support of a veryhigh proportion, 65 per cent, of thetotal number of employees in the nego-tiating unit is being proposed as therequisite minimum. A union with lesservote or support, even if above 51 percent, will have to allow some smallunion with only 20 per cent support

to be associated in bargaining, therebymaking the bargaining process morecumbersome and putting a premium onsmall, sectional or even craft unions.Again, if no union gets more than 50per cent support, no union as such willhave any role in negotiations since, ac-cording to the new proposals, thebargaining agent in such cases will bea boy directly elected by the emplo-yees unless there is only one union inthe unit, in which case a minimum, of40 per cent support will secure for itthe negotiating agent status. Thus, ifin some unit or industry, there is oneunion with 45 per cent support andanother with a mere 5 per cent sup-port, neither can have any direct sayin negotiations.

To sum up, an overview of the gov-ernment proposals suggests that thenew industrial relations legislation willnot mark any significant departure fromthe present whether in its basic ap-proach or in its specific provisions,except perhaps in respect of recogni-tion of the negotiating agent of work-ers.

PAKISTANThe Legacy of Bhutto

THE death sentence passed on Bbuittoby the Lahore High Court has evokeda wave of sympathy for him amongthe ruling circles of many countries.The following article, from PakistanNewsletter published by the Organi-sation of Progressive Pakistanis, NewYork, discusses the ruthless repressionof his political opponents and workers'and peasants' movements by Bhutto inhis five years in power, first as ChiefMartial Law Administrator and Presi-dent and then as Prime Minister in aconstitutionaIset-up devised by himself.The article was written before Bhutto'sstage-managed elections last year, thewidespread resentment against whichled to his ouster from power by Gene-ral Zia-ul-Haq.

With roots in the feudal class, tieswith the mfilitary elite, immense per-sonal egotism, and a demagogic masteryover the populist idiom which he calls'socialist', Zulfikar Ali Bhutto possessesthe classic qualities of the Fascistpersonality in the modern Third World.Few now remember that he first beganto climb the political ladder under thepatronage of Iskander Mirza, a -familyfriend at that time. Whpn Ayub staged

his coup, Bhutto emerged as one of thefirst civilian ministers in a militarycabinet. Duxing 'the latter part of theYahya regime, he again emerged as themain partner in the power structure inWest Pakistan, fully supported everyaspect of the military action in Bangla-desh, and in the twilight of that regime,even served as its Special Envoy andForeign Minister. Thus, of all thepoliticians in Pakistantoday, he provides-the most concrete and continuous linkwith all the past dictatorial regimes.It is indicative of Bhutto's ties with

the military elite that Tikka Khan, hisC-in-C and personal adviser during theescalation in Baluchistan, previouslyserved as Yahya's strongman in Bangla-desh and Ayub's main military com-mander in Baluchistan during the early1960s. Bhutto committed himself tooptimal military solutions for normalpolitical problems, niot only in the caseof the Baluch national agitation whichhis militarisation converted into a full-scale insurgency, but also such localaffairs as the peasant agitation in Dirwhere 10,000 military personnel movedin with amiour and aircraft, againstsome 3,000 peasants, killing upward of

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ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY April 1, 1978600 people.After becoming head of State, Bhuttosystematically resfricted autonomousconduct of all social groups and insti-tutions, bringing each class and eachsocial formation under the hegemony ofthe absolutist State. First, he hand-cuffed for television display a couple ofbig industrialists against whom he hadpersonal grudges; this contributed tohis populist image and served to terrifythe opposition within the affluentgroups. Taking advantage of the mili-tary elite's incapacity for independentaction in the wake of the Bangladeslhdebacle, he carried out at least three,purges, ranging in rank from juniorofficers to Major-Generals,so as to putin place a conmmand tructure loyal tohimself. He similarly retired hundredsof civil servants, thus opening up jobsfor new recruits from the middle classeswNhowere now personally grateful ltohimn;this subterfuge was used also toappoint those personal friends to topjobs in the Civil Superior Services whowere not in those jobs already. Insidethe People's Party, he carried out mas-sive purges, primarily agr4nst the Left,making room for new feudal elementsto join PPP and weeding out the populararid democratic elements.

Bhutto's lack of tolerance for pluralityof opinions within the People's Partywholly complemented an even greatertntolerance of parliamentary oppositionfrom other quarters. Although thecontrol over the legislatures of Sarhadand Baluchistan by the NAP-JUI coali-tion did not threaten Bht.tto's controlat the Centre, where the National As-senbly was firmly in the hands of PPP,he nevertheless took all possible. stepsto pre-empt such threats in the future.Provincial goveimments were dismissed,political parties outlawed, oppositionleaders arrested and new leaders createdwith the force of arms and money; inBaluchistan the Provincial Assemblydiid not even meet in three years.

Attacks on non-parliamentary opposi-tio(n were of course been even moreextensive, none too subtle, and alwaysbrutal. The demagogic character ofthe Bhutto regime was revealed mostclearly in this area. Bhutto assumedpower in December 1971. In January1972, personal vendetta against a fewindustrialists was settled by humiliatingthem on national television. In May,Bhutto expatiated on "the spirit of theParis Commune" and declared MayDay a national holiday. Then came theturnabout. In June, while. a World

Bank team sat in conference roomslinking the question of foreign aid tocontrol of the labour situation, armedpolice shot down 30 workers in thestreets of Karachi. In October thatyear, 15 workers were killed in theLandhi industrial area by the policewhich were now joined by anny units,to prove that workers' militancy was tobe crushed by any means necessary.Over the next few years, these sceneswere repeated with murderousinsistencethroughout the country and there was,literally, nz_ industrial centre or areawhere workers did not suffer retrench-ment by the thousands, widespreadarrests and tortures, destruction andpolice occupation of trade unions andtheir offices, and state-sponsored mas-sacres of their most militant leaders.The working class of course retaliated:in factory takeovers at Seven-Up andKohinoor Rayon in 1972; in the strikesof over 80,000 industrial workers inLandhi-Korangi area in the same year;in the prolonged agitation of railwayworkers throughout 1974-75; in thefuneral procession of Abdul Rebman, amartyred trade union leader, whichimmobilisedthe city of Lahore and cutcommunication links throughout Cen-tral Punjab; in the two-month longstrike throughout Swat during thewinter of 1974-75; in a thousand strikesand job actions throughout the country.In short, the Bhutto government failedto break the heroic will of the workingclass, but the list of those martyred,tortured or sim;ply incarcerating injails grew painfullv long. ITe Net'YqlrkTimes reported 50,000 politicalprisoners in. Pakistan, which was un-doubtedly a conservative estimate.

More even than against the urbanworking class, state violence was usedmost extensively in bnrtalising the pea-sant revolution and the resistence ofnational minorities. Peasant militancyin Sarhad reached vast proportions andinow covers a great area extending fromHashtnagar and Malakand to the val-leys of Swat and Kaghan, and fromMardan to Dir and Chitral. In response,aver 100 cadres of Mazdoor-KisanParty were massacred and, as early asthe winter of 1972-73, over 5,000 pea-sants were in jail and over 35,000 werefacing a variety of legal frame-ups. Inthe prime feudal areas of Punjab, suchas Sargodha and Bahawalpur divisions,lpeasant cadres were killed and torturednot only by the armed police but also1by private -militias of the dominantfeudal clans, such as the Laghari and

Mazari clans, xvhohad full support andprotection of the state. Meanwhile, themountainous regions of Sarhad provincesaw an ambitious plan of building roads,helipads, and generally a most moderinsystem ,of transport and communica-tions, anticipating, in the near future.a war of counter-insurgencyof the typealready raging in Baluchistall.While the repeated use of armiyandpolice in Sarhad, Sindh and Punjabwas an affair tnainly of small and me-dium-sized units, Baluchistan was ofcourse under full military occupation,with all the trappings of a Vietnam-style war. At any given time, a hundredthousand soldiers were deployed there,on a rotating basis, which meant thatwithin two years the whole of PakistanArmy could gain the Baluchistan ex-perience, ready then to apply it else-where in the country. This experienceincluded the familiar pattern of garnrsontowns and- free-fire zones, heliborinetroops and transfers of population? air-dropped supplies and routine missionsto lomb and napalm the civilian popu-lation. It was a classic counter-insurg-ency operation, undertaken by an armyhumiliated in, Bangladesh and nowmaking a brtutalattempt to retrieve itslost *honour'.Meanwhile, there are six branches

of police, four of them brand newvanddevised by the Bhutto regime. A pub-lication by South Asia Students'Associatioin in Berkeley cited thestatistics:At the close of Yahya's regime, thetotal expenditure on special policeestablishmnentwas Rs 20.09,462. In,1972. the first year of Bhutto's terimof office shows an increase of Rs37,93,400. The estimates for 1973are in the range of Rs 1,66,96.300.If the lump charges of Rs 23,89,000paid tc the provincial governmentsare added, the increase is 9.5 fold.Add to this the expenditure on theFederal SecuLrityForce and the riseis of the or(ler of 27.6 fold. (PuniabPutnch, July 8, 197.3.)

Note that this 3,000 per cent increasein budget allocations for police andiintelligence services covered only thefirst two years of the Bhutto regime.Further increases occurred during the.past three years as well, particularly in1976. This expansion of the domesticrepressive forces of course served adouble function. One, it kept the civi-lian poipulation in a state ofl perpetualterror. Second, the hugely increasedpower and budget allocations gave thebureaucratsof these services a stake in

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April 1, 197$ ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLYprotecting the regime which had giventhem these unprecedented privileges.

The casc of the Armed Forces% asmore complex and, coupled with theexpansion of police and intelligenceservices, constituted the cornerstone ofthe dleveloping tendency toward Fasc-ism,proper. We shall therefore examinein slightly greater detail.

Tle officer ranks of Pakistan's armyhave undergone a gradual but unmis-takable transformation whereby theold-s.tyle, hard-drinkin.g, British Empiretype of officer corps has been replacedmainly by a second generation of com-manders who are typically more con-servative socially, in personal conductperhaps not very religious but in out-look rather close to Jama'at-e-Islamiand Tehrik-Istiqlal, fundamentalist andpuritanical in. ideology, quite corruptand corruptible, and irn the conceptionof their tasks even more ruthless thantheir predecessors. These officers bearmonumental grudges of personal aswell as institutional origins. Personally,many of them come from the Potoharregion and have not been beneficiariesof capitalist agriculture in the GreenRevolution areas; nor have they acquir-edl new lands. They resent the factthat their predecessors came largelyfrom the landowning families in fertileareas of Central Punjab, were awardedadditional !ands in the border regionsof Punjab and the barrage areas ofSindh, and, in addition, ruled thecountry for over a decade, with obviou.sopportunities in government, commerceand even industry. The officers of today,by contrast, have made no comparableeconomic and political gains, and lack-ing requisite political power, they areblamednonethelessfor the misrulkoftheir predecessors.Predictably,a tend-ency is growingamongthese officers ocapturepoliticalpower so as to relievetheir personalrage and reward them-selves suitably.

The instituticnalgrudge is, if any-thing, even more pressing.At the timewhen they first joined the ranks, theArmywas the dominant nstitutionofpower and politics in Pakistan.Todav,when they have climbedto the top oftheir-heap, the army tands thoroughlydiscreditedboth as a politicalinstitu-tion and as a fightin.gorce. Politicallydiscredited, because the consensusofopinion n Pakistan s that is was themiMtarisation,f politics which led tothe crises of the 1960s and the finaldismembermenltof.the country in Dec-

ember 1971. Militarily descredited,because the Pakistan army is the onlyfully defeated modern army in theworld, i e, the only modern aIrny whichactually signed a surrender documentand sent several divisions of its mento be prisoners of war in another coun-try. Day in and day out, these officers,b)rought up to be arrogant, live a con-stant nightmare of humiliations iilwhich .men who thought of themselvesas heroes, have to know*the'mselvesasmere parasites. Out of this frustrationis born the need to shift the blame andrebuild the shattered self-image. Theshifting of blame takes peculiar forms.The favourite argument of the newcommanders is that the army failed inits political and military undertakingsnot because- of incompetence or cor-ruption, nor because of its retrogressiveideology and role in natiorXalpolitics,but because the army, agreed to actwvithin limits set by the politicians;therefore, they say, the next time thearmy goes in, it must do a completeshake-up of all aspects of society, un-hampered by political considerationsin Indonesian or Chilean style, nodoubt. The reconstructionof the self-image for' these officers, may wellinvolve construction of a Fascist statefar more ruthless than the regimes ofYahya and Ayub who, for all the crimesthey committed, came from the so-call-ed 'enlightened' wing of the armedforces*

Bhutto alienated significanit sectionsof the officer ranks when he carried06ut the initial purges for establishinga command structure loyal to, himself.And there are numerous officers whodisliked his populist rhetoric. The po-litical ambitions of these officers hadbeen kept in check by the Bhuttoregime vhich had done much to ap-pease the military establishment.International pressure was orchestratedsuccessfully to obtain the release -otthe prisoners of war in India, with noadditional humiliations for the Pakistanarmy. Domestically, Bhutto punctuallypraised the valour of the armed forcesas if their miserable performance inEast Bengal was not a recorded factof history. With only half of thecountry now left to defend, budgetallocations for the military increasedeach vear. The armament industry in-side the country saw major expansionand inodernisation, sources for armrsprocuremi-ent ow included 'substantialpurchases from France, and enormousquantiti~esXf military ' hardware wvere

obtained from Iran. The intense mili-tary build-up in the oil kingdoms open-ed up nev opportunities for Pakistaniofficers in training facilities, groundsupport activities and even combatduty; Pakistani. officers thus eamedhuge salaries not only by training Saudior Omani troops but also taking a lead-irig part in the newly constituted forcesof the United Arab Emirates. Large-scale combat tasks were of coursecreated at home and *the army which'lost its honour' in Bangladesh wasbusily 'restoring its honour' in Balu-chistan. Detailed examination of themilitary brutalisation of the Baluchpeople is not the subject of this article.Suffice it to say that if we comparethe 100,000 troops in Baluchistantodaywith the 70,000 who were deployed inEast Bengal, and if we compare alsothe relative population figures of Balu-chistan- and Bangladesh, we can easilysee that with respect to populationconcentration the military offensive inBaluchistan is 50 times as intense.The process of militarisation, onceEet in motion, is now likely to pick upits own momentum. That will be parti-cularly the case if the offensive inBaluchistan stagnates, as it seems to benow doing.. The army, once boggeddown, in a region, is likely to clamourfor full political authority throughoutthe country. And there are other fac-tors as well. The economic crisis issevere enough and is likely *togetworse. The mass movement of theworking classes and the oppressednational minorities, though still farfrom organisational and ideologicalmaturity, has greater numerical strengthand militancy than ever before. Inresponse, the' regime has staked itssurvival upon loyalty of the super-richand repressive capacity of the stateinstitutions. This polarisation hasoccurred on such a large and dynamicscale, and factors which can trigger offa great social upheavel are so, numer-ouIs, that no one can predict where andwhen the flash point of the conflictwill come. It is impossible, however,not to see the momentum toward justsuch a flash point.

Bhuttoplayed a central role in,mould-ing the institutions of repression andit is possible that these institutionsshall devour him as well, along witlhmuch else. In the perspective of his-tory, Bhutto's personal fortunes are un-important. Crucial is the realisationthat Pakistan's slide toward Fascism isnow inexorable.

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Epi Weekly, The Legacy of Bhutto, 1978