Pakistan's Pioblem
In constitutional terms Pakistan is an unconscionable time in being born. Last spring Mr. Mohammad All pointed with some satisfaction to the efforts of his Government to speed delivery, and expected general elections to a newly constituted Central Legislature early in 1955. Now the Constituent Assembly is suspended under the state of emergency declared last Sunday by the Governor-General, Mr. Ghulam Mohammad. It is being argued, it is true, that this is not a dissolution but a prorogation of a sovereign body, and that the Govern- ment has merely been reorganised. But the arguments them- selves may further delay the solution of Pakistan's most obstinate problem. the Punjabi-Bengali rivalry. When Pakistan was an idea and not a fact, its critics everywhere attacked its economic viability. In the first two or three years of its existence Pakistanis triumphantly refuted this objection —perhaps a little too triumphantly, for there has since been rougher weather. Still, it is a going concern, with signs of economic recovery to be seen, and Mr. Mohammad All has returned from America, hurriedly, with the promise of much increased non-military aid. What has really been shown in the past seven years is that the thousand-mile gap between West and East Pakistan, the gap that a constitution must finally bridge, is a political one. Pakistan could be con- sidered as a country with a distant dependency, but there would still be dispute as to which is the mother-country and which the dependency. Translated into terms of personalities the dispute becomes intricate and sometimes unsavoury, but it remains a genuine problem of human politics which only time—and a constitution—will solve.
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