The first year of the new decade promises to be the most crucial in the 22- year history of Pakistan. Between now and Oct. 5, when a general election is due, will be decided whether this problematical nation will survive in any reasonable state of order. A sign of what could happen to Pakistan was the five-month period of mass unrest which forced President Ayub to resign last March. In the Eastern wing particularly, the students and the masses showed the potency of their yearnings for a bigger say. Only martial law has since kept the lid on that pressure cooker.

When the then Commander-in-Chief, Gen. Yahya Khan, took over as Head of State from President Ayub, he did so because, as when Ayub himself took over in 1958, only the Army could save the nation from itself. Even though with rare courage and honesty, he has now mapped out a course for phasing out of his own administration and the setting up of a Parliamentary democracy, it is as yet far from sure that he and the Army will not continue to be needed, perhaps permanently. Few of the 130 million Pakistanis, and even fewer foreign observers, believed Gen. Yahya’s promises of a democratic transfer of power. Now he is committed to a specific timetable. From Jan. 1, full political activity consistent with law and order and the maintenance of national security has been allowed. By June, more than 60 million voters will be enrolled. Then in October will come the elections for the Constituent Assembly, which will have the tricky task of devising a new constitution within 120 days.

This will be the first poll on the basis of one man one vote for a National Assembly in Pakistan’s history. There is no doubting the sincerity of the General’s scheme. He has made it amply clear in private that he wishes to revert to soldiering, and he has made his commitment to democracy, both in private and in public, very plain. What still remains in doubt is Pakistan’s ability to take advantage of the rare opportunity given her. The parties and politicians as yet show little sign that they are equal to the challenge.

This is partly a matter of history. The premature death of the nation’s founder, Mr. Jinnah, and the mysterious assassination of his successor, Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, were a double disaster for Pakistan politics, leaving it bereft of leadership. Pakistan’s politicians have never since been able to rise above the rack of personal aggrandizement, petty intrigues and fruitless bickering over non-issues. Their concerns are factional not national. It is significant that the man most likely to become Prime Minister if a civilian Government is eventually formed - Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, head of the Awami League, the leading party in the Eastern wing - is concerned solely with securing autonomy for East Pakistan and evidently has no notion of a national policy.

Though there has been some polarisation between Left and Right among the many groupings, there is stil1 scant sign that like-minded political parties are forming cohesive alliances. There is virtually no sign either that anyone has yet worked out a coherent political platform or policy. While it is true that the prospect of continued military dictatorship may, as it were, “frighten” the politicians into working for democratic system, the chances look dim.

Recent voting' for leaders in some trade and student unions has shown a marked Right-wing tendency. This could well induce the not notably responsible Leftist parties, chiefly Mr. Bhutto’s People’s Party in the West and Maulana Bhasani’s pro-Maoist National Awami Party in the East, to sabotage Gen. Yahya’s election timetable, forcing him, by causing disorder, to abandon it. Her lack-lustre politicians, however, are only one of Pakistan’s problems and probably not the chief one.

It took eight years to draw up Pakistan’s first constitution, compared with the 120 days to be given to the new Assembly. The new framework will somehow have to reconcile national unity and integrity with the powerfully conflicting pulls of the East wing and West wing. It will have to satisfy also the demands of the four newly re-created Provinces which comprise the West wing. It will have to recognise the East’s preponderance in population without letting it dominate the West. It will have to subsume the Islamic ideals of the still powerful mullahs with the secularist. Pragmatic attitudes of the young and educated.

Two nations

The nub here is the inescapable division between the country’s two wings. On almost every count except religion they are as different as two nations, separated as they are by 1,000 miles of hostile India. They differ in race, language, economy and even diet. The East will have 168 seats out Of 300 in the Assembly. Despite its greater population and greater needs, the East long been denied even as much as a half share in the nation’s economic development. The Government has been run chiefly for the benefit of the West. The demand now in the East is for almost complete autonomy, leaving the Central Government responsible only for foreign affairs and defence.

Gen. Yahya acknowledged in his broadcast of Nov. 28 that the people of each wing would control their own development and resources “as long as it does not affect the working of the national Government.” Finding the balance will be akin to squaring the circle. Meanwhile the problems of the Eastern wing are mounting to disaster level and little is being done to meet them. The economic collapse of the East would bring such chaos as to make nonsense of any pretty formulae evolved by the constitution-makers.

East Pakistan is on the permanent verge of famine, which is being relieved only to a small extent by shipments of grain from West Pakistan. The region’s population increases by four million a year. Countless thousands, moreover, are hit annually by monsoon floods and the consequent trail of cholera, malaria and other diseases. Unemployment is such that for every advertised vacancy in Dacca there are 2,000 or more applications in person. However, the Punjabis of the West, the most enterprising, energetic and educated section of Pakistan’s population, are unlikely to acquiesce in the whittling away of their dominance either by the demands for parity from the East or for greater autonomy from the three other Provinces of the Western wing - Sind, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier.

The Punjabi’s have dominated the Civil Service, business and the Army and have fully exploited their position. They have been allotted thousands of newly irrigated acres in Sind, for example, while the local farmers have been left wanting. While at the political level this problem is likely to be met by a bicameral system which safeguards minority interests in the Upper House, this is unlikely to solve deep-rooted social and racial antagonisms at the grass roots.

So, for all the chances for rehabilitation that the remarkable interregnum of Gen. Yahya has given Pakistan, the prospects cannot be regarded as anything better than uncertain. Despite his reluctance to stay as Head of State, Gen. Yahya may thus be forced to carry on. He has privately acknowledged that this may prove necessary, distasteful though it would be to him.

There is one further question that the new constitution will therefore have to answer: the role of the President in the political process. Though Pakistan has been set on the road to Parliamentary democracy, it has taken a strong man to do it. With the sad deterioration of India’s Parliamentary system as an uncomfortably close example, Pakistan could well find that she wants and needs that the same strong man continue at the helm after all. Rawalpindi