Dictatorship is Crumbling Speech at Public Meeting. Abbottabad, October 29, 1968

They accuse me of lust for power and say that is why I are opposing this Government. I am not interested in power. It I had any desire to hold on to power, I would have been with this Government, not out of it. It is this Government which is drunk with power. It is holding on to power desperately for the last ten years and is not prepared to give it up under any circumstance. This Government knows it very well that the people are against them. They have seen that the people are opposed to them.

Their economic policies are a complete failure. This Government is aware of the fact that the people are becoming poorer every day. These rulers know that frustration and injustice is increasing every day. The poor people are protesting against it. They are being suppressed and their troubles are increasing, but they are being dubbed as disruptionists. The rulers tell us that the people who are protesting against the policies of the Government are disruptionists, otherwise there is stability in the country and the country has progressed a lot. I want to ask this Government as to what type of stability is this? If they mean the stability of the graveyard, then certainly this country is stabilized. From Khyber to Karachi and from Karachi to Chittagong, wherever you go, hatred against this Government is on the increase. I have toured this area. I wanted to go to Peshawar and hold a public meeting there but I was not allowed to do so. Section 144 has been imposed. In fact, section 144 has become the constitution of this Government.

We do not bother about their wealth or about their power or about their police. We know that the people of Pakistan are with us. The people of Pakistan will follow the right path and we will struggle for them come what may. We are not going to retrace our steps, even if we have to pay for this defiance with our lives. Brothers! I have committed mistakes, in my life. I am a human being and to err is human. I don’t say that I have never committed any mistake or blunders but for my sins and blunders I shall repent before my Creator and beg forgiveness. I shall not go to the President. I know that I have made mistakes but my greatest mistake has been that I was associated with this Government. I admit that we are sinful but the people in this Government are not angels. They have sucked the blood of the entire country. They have usurped the wealth of the whole nation. It does not lie in their mouth to accuse us. We know our weaknesses but they should try to assess their own misdeeds.

What are they doing to this country? How are they running this Government? What service are they rendering to the people? You have to look at the worker, at the peasant and at the student to find out the achievements of this Government. The children of the people are deprived of education. They don’t get proper clothing. There are many people who go without food. In spite of this we are told that they have served this country and the country has made progress. Where is this progress? The people come from abroad and tour the country along with the Ministers and later we are told that Mr. McNamara has appreciated the progress made by Pakistan. I call upon Mr. McNamara to come and have a look at our villages and look at the sad plight of the poor. He will find that poverty is increasing every day.

Wherever you go there is hatred for this Government. It exists in the Punjab. Bengal is fed up with this Government. The people in this area are also not happy with this Government. In spite of this the rulers are not prepared to quit the Government. So bad is the plight of the country that there is neither peace nor economic progress. The rulers who are forcibly occupying their chairs for the last ten years accuse others of lust for power. Perhaps they do not know that respect is not gained through power. Quaid-i-Azam whose political life covered a period of almost half a century was in the opposition all his life. He held power for less than two years. But he was our Quaid-i-Azam. The Congress had offered him the top position in the subcontinent but he turned down the offer and said that he would adhere to his principles. He refused to bargain on the question of partition of India. It should be clear that the prestige of a leader is not attained by his remaining in power. That is why hatred against the present rulers is increasing in spite of their being in power.

They admit that they cannot check bribery in the country. They say it is a very difficult problem and it is very difficult to root it out. This Government cannot end poverty. It cannot bring prosperity. It cannot solve the Kashmir problem. What else can it do then? If they have grown tired or if they are sick, I call upon them to vacate their chairs. We will then show to them how to end bribery and how to solve the Kashmir problem. Why are they frightening this brave army? They keep on telling us that India is a big country. Its size is five times that of Pakistan. It has tremendous power and we cannot face her. Don’t show us the map of India. We are well acquainted with it. We know India thoroughly well. On the one hand, they talk proudly of the war fought against India and, on the other, they express regrets about it.

If we try to discuss these things they accuse us of disclosing official secrets. I know what they mean by this. If I was that irresponsible I would have disclosed these secrets at the time of my quitting this Government. I did not say a word about this at the time. If I had been so irresponsible I would have done something immediately after Tashkent. I have not disclosed any secrets so far. If they are leveling this charge to prevent us from exposing their misdeeds I want to warn them that we are determined to expose them. It is our duty to go to the people and to apprise them of the truth. We are only performing our duty and not disclosing any secrets. They try to frighten us. We are not going to be frightened by these threats. If we are guilty of something against law, there are courts in the country. You can try us in those courts.

There is another charge against me that I mislead the students. How can I mislead the students? You have the press with you and you have the television in your control. I cannot go to the universities. I cannot make speeches there. Then how can I mislead them? If the Government wants to be popular among them, it should serve them and withdraw the University Ordinance. Only then can it secure their support. The Government is against the students. It is against the laborers. The wealth of the country is concentrated in the hands of 22 families and political power is entirely in the hands of one family.

My dear friends! I am not of the type who changes with the times. I shall always adhere to my principles which I believe are for the welfare of the common man. I am struggling for the well-being of the common man. I cannot give you details of the excesses the rulers are perpetrating on me. They are giving me the maximum trouble, but I have told them that I am not going to be cowed down. I have told them that I have burnt my boats and I cannot be frightened by them. We are fighting for a right and just cause and we shall emerge triumphant.

I am asked to throw light on many issues. The choice of subjects is difficult for me. They have plunged the entire country into darkness. You might have heard that I intend to speak on Tashkent. I say ‘heard’ because they don’t allow my speeches to be published in the press. I believe that Lahore has the foremost right because Lahore was our first defence-line and it was in Lahore that many students lost their lives in demonstrations against Tashkent. I will certainly speak on Tashkent in Lahore when the time comes. Later, I shall come here and speak on the same subject.

Another charge against me is that I challenged Sheikh Mujib for a debate on Six Points when I was a Minister and now I am trying to bring Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League into the fold of the proposed United Front against the Government. When I challenged Sheikh Mujib on the question of Six Points I believed that two or three of these points were so weak that the people would never accept them. I believed that we must take this issue to the people and try to explain the truth about these points and I am sure we could convince the people. That is why I asked for a public debate. I wanted to meet the challenge on the political platform, by discussing the Six Points in an open debate. Our Government does not believe in political solution. They put Sheikh Mujib in jail. Did it solve the problem? The problem is still there and it is there because people were not allowed to thrash it out and find out for themselves its pros and cons. I am sure the Six Points would have been rejected by the people if discussed openly.

The tactics of this Government are anti-people. That is why this Government is becoming weaker every day. They are ignorant of the real feelings of the masses. This Government is hollow and is bound to fall. We must struggle for democracy because a people’s government cannot come into existence without that. We don’t want the rule of a President. We want a people’s rule which is in everybody’s interest.

We call for democracy and they give us Basic Democracy. This Basic Democracies system is absolutely undemocratic. Under this system the rulers think they are gradually bringing political awareness to the ignorant people. We are thankful to them for raising the number of Basic Democrats from 80 thousand to 120 thousand. But we are not ignorant. I am not criticizing the Basic Democrats. When we come to power we shall make provisions for them. But we cannot give them the right to elect the National Assembly. This Assembly should be elected on the basis of adult franchise. This is the right of every citizen. The Basic Democrats have been wrongly given this power. We want to withdraw this power but this does not mean that we want to abolish the Basic Democracies system. We don’t want to abolish this system. I am not saying this because we want their votes, but if they cast their votes for money, we shall take them to task.

I want to tell you that the forthcoming elections are more important than the previous elections. You have a chance to take this Government to task. Now is the time to ask this Government as to how long it is going to rule over us? How long is it going to use force? How long is it going to suppress us? Its time is over! The wheel has come full circle.

The whole world knows that I was the Foreign Minister of this country and I could establish mills like others. I am not blowing my own trumpet but I am just stating a fact that when I quit this Government, I was offered anything I wanted, a license for a mill or a high post. I told them that I was not interested in any such thing. I chose not to sell my conscience.

My dear brothers! When I left the Government I thought I would go and teach in a university; but when I looked at the sad plight of the poor people of my country I decided to take up their cause and to serve them. I made up my mind that I would make a sacrifice and set an example. I made it clear in East Pakistan also. I am grateful to you for having encouraged me. You should strengthen our hands. The Pakistan People’s Party is your own party. It is a revolutionary party with a revolutionary programme.