Outlook Bleak Bhutto

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For Zulfikar Ali Bhutto the future seems to hold out the noose as the only way of escaping from his prison, while Indira Gandhi can now see power coming once more into her bloodstained hands.

The military regime of General Zia-ul Haq which ousted Bhutto last July, has now tried and sentenced him for ordering the murder of one of his political opponents.

Conscious of the massive unrest such a move would provoke, Zia first banned all political activity in the month before the trial was due to open.

But huge and violent demonstrations have erupted subsequently in support of the former Prime Minister.

mobilisations of peasants demanding land reform, and workers demanding jobs, higher wages and labour rights.

Once ensconced, his grandiose pre-election pledges were tossed aside.

The full force of the bourgeois state was used to smash up factory occupations and prevent land seizures. Bhutto stood clearly revealed as a firm defender of capitalist interests.

He was forced to ease his attacks by the organised opposition of workers.

Yet the crisis of working class leadership in Pakistan, and the dominance of Popular Front policies, inevitably resulted in the diversion of this movement by the cynical populists of the right wing National Alliance.

Armed Confronted with this growing mass hostility, Bhutto himself was driven to call in the armed forces as a base of support for his increasingly dictatorial regime.

Once established on the brink of power, the generals recognised that capitalism could no longer be defended through the agency of bourgeois politicians. They moved to oust Bhutto, and imposed military rule.

Since then, General Lia's regime has ruthlessly suppressed all demooratic rights. The rigged trial of Bhutto is only one small but symbolically significant act in this general repression.

Bhutto's crimes against the workers and peasants of Pakistan are legion, but they cannot be avenged by the military servants of the bourgeois state.

Workers must break from those alien class forces which seek to exploit them, and fight for their own independent interests against Zia, Bhutto and all their determined enemies.

Janata leader Desai

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Bhutto was brought to power on the crest of mass