Pakistan: Past and Present
Four and a half years after Mr Bhutto’s emergence as supreme leader of Pakistan, his opponents are nowhere near evolving a viable challenge to his position. But neither has the country’s politics the placidity which precedes an era of stability. On the contrary, all indications are that the next five years are going to be as tumultuous as the last five have been.
The failure of the ruling party and the opposition to evolve a modus vivendi is a source of friction, but the intensity of the politicians’ bitter feelings against each other and their strident note of acrimony reflect at best a comparatively less intractable aspect of the matter.
Twenty- eight years after its creation, Pakistan is still groping for its national ethos. The heady slogan of a Muslim National Home which turned the dream that the concept of Pakistan was in 1940 a living reality seven years later, retains a very powerful emotional rule.