President Yahya Khan’s constitutional plans after the upheavals in East Pakistan are accompanied by grim reports of the situation in that crucified province. It is now several weeks since he held out the prospect of finding enough representative East Pakistanis to set up a provincial administration and co-operate somehow with West Pakistani politicians to form a civilian national Government. He must have been deplorably out of touch with what was and had been, going on, and now sets more modest and distant goals.

That he rules out fresh elections goes without saying. It is the tragedy of this well-meaning man, and a sobering reflection for the ardent reformers, that the first genuinely free elections, courageously implemented by him resulted in bloodbath that followed. First the general breakdown of law and order. Then the mob murdering West Pakistanis. Then the civil war with Western troops proceeding with brutality, 0ften with savagery, against independence fighters and liberal politicians alike. And fourthly the massacre of East Bengali Hindus by East Bengali Moslems, with the army tolerating, abetting or participating.

Official assurances, before the Press was allowed back into East Pakistan, that conditions were well on the way back to normal were rudely shattered last week by the first cable from Dacca. The situation in Chittagong is now shown to be rather worse. No wonder the Parliamentary delegation could not honestly encourage the six million refugees to return.

President Yahya, dropping the Constituent Assembly, has set up a committee to draft a constitution for a return to + 'civilian rule in four months or so—but longer if the internal and external situation is not propitious. There seems little hope that either will be. He praises the Army for its suppression of the threatened secession, and while promising maximum provincial autonomy, makes it clear that central control will be much stronger than if the compromise rejected by Sheikh Mujib, the Eastern leader, who won the election and is now in prison. Evidently East Pakistan is to be treated as a kind of colony. How much self-rule it gets will depend on how it accepts its lot.