Pakistan: Ayub ‘s Acid Test

“The broad masses of the people—95% of Pakistan—positively do not want a return to parliamentary democracy. If we can run a country without a party system, we shall be a happier people.” Leaning forward intently in a wicker chair on the terrace of the President’s House in East Pakistan, Pakistan Strongman Mohammed Ayub Khan was discoursing on his favorite subject: the evils of politics.

A general who was trained at Britain’s Sandhurst, Ayub has a soldier’s dislike for politicians. In Ayub’s Pakistan, politicking is literally a crime: criticism of his government is punishable by 14 years’ hard labor. But under his benign rule, few have actually been sent to the workhouse, and in the nearly three years since he peaceably ejected the squabbling, corrupt politicians in exasperation and took over the government, he has made a spirited assault on Pakistan’s multitude of ills.

No Tea Money. Ayub has pushed through a land reform program, redistributing some 23% of Pakistani farmland to onetime tenant farmers. Karachi’s teeming refugee slums have been razed; some 100,000 refugees from the bloody division of Pakistan and India were relocated in plain but clean modern colonies. No longer is “tea money” necessary to get in to see a government official. Ayub has made Pakistan’s government the least corrupt of any nation on the Asian continent.

On the edge of bankruptcy three years ago, Pakistan now has some $235 million in foreign exchange reserves, has curbed inflation at home. Ayub stoked up the Pakistan Industrial Development Corp., which starts new industries with government capital, sells them to private businessmen as soon as they are flourishing. The agency helped boost Pakistan’s national income some 4% last year. Food grain output has increased almost 19%.

One-Woman Palace. In foreign relations. Ayub has striven earnestly to improve relations with India, talking a suspicious Nehru into meeting him at the bargaining table. If they could not get around to settling their difficulties in Kashmir, they agreed to divide the waters of the Indus River equitably. Some border tensions have eased, and trade between the two bad neighbors has increased. But despite its huge population (with 93.8 million people, it is the biggest Moslem nation in the world), Pakistan has had surprisingly little impact on world councils. Setting out to make Pakistan’s influence felt more. Ayub has visited eleven nations in the past year, got foreign aid from West Germany and Japan, will visit President Kennedy in Washington in November. Last month Ayub’s government signed a $30 million oil exploration deal with Russia. Pakistan remains a staunch Western ally, gets some $250 million in aid from the U.S. annually, largely to help support its big (160,-ooo men) army.

Ayub has started construction on a luxurious new capital for Pakistan in the cool highlands near Rawalpindi. When completed (in ten years), it will be one of the best-planned yet lowest-cost-per-unit cities in Asia. In keeping with Ayub’s austere, no-nonsense habits, he has instructed the builders that the new presidential palace should be the kind of place that “one woman can run.”

Man Eating Man. For all Ayub’s efforts, the problems of Pakistan remain immense. His census takers were dismayed this year to find that in a decade the population had jumped 23.7% (neighboring India has jumped 20%). “Unless we can effectively curb this galloping population growth, it will soon outstrip the pace of our economic development,” warns Ayub, “and, believe me, the time may come when man may start eating man.” Despite economic gains, the population growth in the last five years has held per capita income nearly steady—at a subsistence $50 a year per Pakistani. Less than 20% of the population can read or write, and the vast majority scratch out a living on forbidding land. Only 70,000 acres of arable land have been reclaimed for use, though Pakistan annually loses some 100,000 more through salinity and water-logging. Vast new drainage programs are needed. Ayub last week empowered a committee of experts to draw up a ten-year land reclamation plan—and with characteristic impatience, ordered that the plan be submitted to him in six weeks.

But the acid test of Ayub as a benign dictator still lies ahead: the transition from martial-law government back to civilian rule. The testing time is not far off. Ayub has promised that Pakistan will hold its presidential election next year. His constitional commission will report within the next month. Ayub knows what he wants: 1) a presidential system that gives the executive relative immunity from the legislature; 2) a lower house elected along U.S. lines, but without authority to whittle at government budgets as Congress can; 3) indirect election of both the president and legislature. The electors would be the 80,000 village elders elected under the “Basic Democracies” system that Ayub has already set up. Last year, these electors gave Ayub a 95.6% vote of confidence.

If he chooses to run for the presidency under the new constitution, there is little doubt that the electors will repeat their vote of confidence.