Athar Osama July 9th, 2007
By: Athar Osama
The Coup…
The removal of the Constituent Assembly put Pakistan into yet another constitutional crisis. This was an entity entrusted, under the terms of the Independence of India Act of 1947, by the King of England to form the constitution of the Pakistani 
dominion. With the constituent assembly now gone, the question arose as to who was to carry forward the task of constitution-making in Pakistan? Could a new constituent assembly be legitimately elected to replace the older one? What would be the “ground-rules” for electing such an assembly? Who would set those rules and whether they would be acceptable to all parties?
In the case of the old Constituent Assembly—imperfect as it was—the ground rules were set by the authority of the King of England and were deemed to be equally biased towards all parties. With the two largest provinces already at loggerheads with each other and the smaller provinces complaining about the domination of the larger ones, it would have been difficult to agree upon the ground rules of electing a new constituent assembly in a manner that would not be perceived as biased at its very onset. Even if such an assembly were to get elected and accepted by all parties, where would it start its work? How much of the work of the older Constituent Assembly could it draw upon?
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Athar Osama July 9th, 2007
The Constitution
Having looked at the “Constitutional Coup” of 1954 and its repurcussions in the form of Justice Munir’s historic judgment, we now turn towards the Pakistan’s renewed quest for a Constitution.
An Era of Legal Challenges
With Justice Munir’s verdict in the Tamizuddin Khan case, not only did the Constituent Assembly stood dissolved but also seve
n long years of important legislation was eliminated by a stroke of a pen. Forty-six Acts on the statute books became invalid thus putting the country in a legal vacuum making it almost impossible to govern. Days after the judgment, the Governor-General promulgated Emergency Powers Ordinance IX of 1955 that give him the power to:
- Make provision for framing the Constitution of Pakistan
- Make provision to constitute the province of West Pakistan
- Validate laws which have been passed by the Constituent Assembly but had not received assent of the Governor-General
- Authenticate the Central Budget
- Name East Bengal as East Pakistan (Khan, 2001, p. 89)
Governor-General’s Emergency Powers Ordinance was immediately challenged in the court. In Usif Patel vs. The Crown, Chief Justice Munir sided with the petitioner and declared the Emergency Powers Ordinance IX of 1955 as ultra vires (without legal authority). In a major flip-flop of his earlier decision, Justice Munir’s judgment recognized the continuing authority of the Constituent Assembly, and nobody else, to make any provisions to the country’s Constitution. Ironically, this was the same Constituent Assembly that had stood dissolved through his decision in the Tamizuddin Khan case.
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Athar Osama July 2nd, 2007
By: Athar Osama
In the first of the two pieces on Pakistan’s Constitutional Deadlock in early-1950s, on July 2nd, 2007, we looked at the emerging debate and unrest in the provice of East Pakistan. We examined the pendulum of constitutional progress swing all the way towards a pro-Punjab and anit-Bengal position in the interim report of the Basic Principles Committee and then all the way to a pro-Bengal and anti-Punjab position in the final report of the Basic Principles Committee. Unfortunately, Khwaja Nazimuddin became the first victim of this constitutional deadlock that existed between the two largest provinces of the country. In this artcle, we will examine the progress made under the new Prime Minister, Mohammad Ali Bogra–another Bengali–who almost provided Pakistan with its first Constitution.
Constitutional Progress through the “Mohammad Ali Formula”
With Khawaja Nazimuddin out of the picture, Mohammad Ali Bogra was installed as the new Prime Minister. Mohammad Ali Bogra was a statesman of Bengali descent who came from the family of Nawabs of Bengal (Wikipedia, 2007). At the time of his appointment as Prime Minister, he was serving as the country’s ambassador to the United States and was hurriedly called back to take over the Ministry.
Mohammad Ali Bogra had a tight rope to walk as he balanced the Punjabi interests—to whom he owed his appointment—and the Bengali resentment towards perceived domination by Punjabi politicians—most notably the Governor General himself (Sayeed, 1960, p. 418). In the Cabinet as well, Bogra had little support of his own as he tried to act as a go between the two powerful interest groups. Undaunted by this, however, Bogra took on the challenge for finding a compromise solution to the country’s constitutional impasse.
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