Address to Pakistan People’s Party official at Lahore on January 28, 1973

President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said that Governors and Ministers would soon be relieved of their party offices and party workers would be given this responsibility.

Addressing a large number of unit Presidents and Secretaries of the Lahore People’s Party at the Governor’s House the President said that the decision, which was taken at the party convention in December at Rawalpindi, would be implemented shortly. A meeting of the Central Working Committee would be held in February to decide the matter, he added.

The President told the workers, who greeted the announcement with loud cheers that the step was necessary so that the Governors and Ministers could devote their whole attention to their official responsibilities. It was also the safeguard the party interest by making the workers responsible to the organizational matters.

He said that the Governors and Ministers, who also held party offices, were not in a position to discharge their national and international obligations squarely as they had to look after the party interests as well at the same time. Their full and undivided attention to their official duties was essential to make the Government work successfully. By having dual charge, they could not be expected to do justice to any of them, he said.

The President said that judicious division of offices would set happy and noble democratic traditions.

He said that after independence, Quaid-i-Millat Liaquat Ali Khan also retained the President ship of the Muslim League but after some time he felt that party offices should be separated which, in fact, he did. But later, neither the Muslim League, nor other parties, followed these democratic principles.

We have the resources, we have the means. National honor can vindicated in a variety of ways. One way to vindicate national honor is by a triumph in peace. There are so many people sleeping in the streets of Calcutta. There are so many people who are starving in India. There are so many problems, our problems of poverty, our problems of misery, if we can give employment to our people’s satisfaction, good education and if the world can see well, this is the part of the subcontinent which is really ticking.

We must make our land tick, we must make our land move, make our society move. That itself, will be a great achievement which can be made in all fields but if the foundation is hollow you cannot build an edifice on it. But unfortunately India is building and edifice on hollow foundation and she wants to become a great power.

The great powers are not made in that way. America is a great power, the Soviet Union is a great power. China is a great power because of the progress they have achieved, the technological progress, the per capita income and the way they have resolved their economic and social problems. That is what made them great. So also we can make our country great in that way and I think within three to four years you will see the difference, whatever the Government in power, we are doing our best according to our ability, and our conscience.

You might not be happy with everything. Nobody can be happy with everything but we are doing our best and I am quite sure and I am quite sanguine that we will attain those high standards, those great standards which would wipe out the stigma that befell us in 1971.

The stigma must be wiped out and night can turn into day and day can turn into night. That makes no difference but we must wipe it out.

It is our bounden duty and I have said that there are many ways of wiping it out. It need not be through clash of arms, it can be through a triumph of peace and the triumph of progress. So each one of us has a responsibility, each one of us has a role to play.

Nobody can say that I am not concerned it does not brother me, that I am not interested because there is too much is stake, far too much is at stake and there is no personal approach to a national injury. We have gone through a national injury and when the country goes through a national injury, human beings endowed with thinking, sensitive to good and bad, must think in terms of the future and all our eyes are directed to the future.

I want to assure you, gentlemen of the armed forces, that although there is a civilian Government in office your requirements and needs are still in our eyes the super most. Because the defence of the country is super most and you should have no fears. Please do not entertain any fears. We are painstakingly making efforts to improve the quality of armed forces, the standards of fortifications, our defence, our strategy for integration between the three services, modern techniques, modern methods. The lesson we have learnt from the last war, al these things are being given the highest attention and your respective Chiefs of Staff will tell you that we have held more meeting with the armed forces in the last one year on defence matters than had been held in the last 25 years, whether there were civilian Governments or military governments.

And we have been going deep into these problems, not superficially, not following the shortcuts, not reading the summaries, but going through the whole text-book from A to Z because one must approach these fundamental problems fundamentally. And to the ladies, I would like to tell them that what makes a good home, a good soldier, is a happy home, a contented home. If the soldier or the officer feels that he has nothing to worry about, that he has nothing a worry about, that he has no problems f his children, of his family of his wife, of his mother, then he will not bother about other things. So the domestic problem is very important, and your cost of living, your standard of living or the salaries, your children’s education, all these are not your problems.

For a good and decent Government those are the problems of the Government and that is way a Government which is dedicated to the common weal, social weal must morally accept the responsibility of assuring its citizens, of assuring the children, the man, the woman, the family, proper security, a sure future. These are our objectives. These are our efforts and we are moving in that direction. I can tell you with all the difficulties and ups and downs and the drawbacks, willy nilly we are jogging along, we went through a bad ear, 1972 was very bad year.

It was a nightmare but I don’t say that 1973 is going to be very good. 1973 is also going to be a very difficult year because we are still going through the transition and there will be upheavals, there will be tensions and problems but we are seized of the problems. We are vigilant. There are international intrigues, there are internal matters, internal forces, so this year is also going to be a difficult year. Why should I conceal things from my friends and my brothers and sisters? I want to tell you that this one year is also going to be difficult year, inflationary pressures before we can attain self-sufficiency in sugar and in wheat and before we can bring about again a reactivisation on the proper lines in our industrialization and make the necessary readjustments. So we will have to work harder, we have to toil a little more. I think we have already turned the corner and by the next year this time when we meet again to have our dinner in Lahore I can tell you by that time, that we would have not only turned the corner but we would have been galloping forward and “Insha-Allah” this is not a false prediction.

This is a correct scientific evaluation that I am giving you because political matters are a science as much a military matters are science and I would like you to bear with us, with our difficulties for this temporary transition which has been brought about by a very nasty and painful dislocation as a result of the dismemberment of our country and I am quite confident that we will keep on marching forward to greater heights.