Word: ghulam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pakistan, the world's seventh most populous nation, is in legal chaos. Governor General Ghulam Mohammed's right to collect taxes, arrest criminals and run the country is in serious question. A month ago Pakistan's Federal Court invalidated 46 of the country's basic laws on the grounds that between 1948 and 1954 the Constituent Assembly had not submitted its laws to the Governor General...
Decreeing "emergency powers" to himself, Ghulam Mohammed revalidated most of the laws, but last week the court ruled that his action was illegal: only an Assembly and a Governor General acting jointly comprise a sovereign body. This was a bit awkward for Ghulam, who dissolved the Assembly last year and now runs a "controlled democracy...
...teeming Karachi, swollen with a million refugees, energetic Pakistanis went about business as usual. Whatever legal confusion there might be to litigants, drovers with their camel carts and cabbies in their ancient Kaiser sedans still obeyed Karachi's traffic cops. Ghulam called a new "constituent convention" of 60 mem bers-seven members appointed by himself and 53 to be elected by provincial assemblies-to cooperate with him in rule by law. Until the convention assembles in May, Ghulam will do his best to contain legal chaos by seeking "the Federal Court's advice...
...Karachi last week, iron-minded, frail bodied Governor General Ghulam Mohammed decreed for himself further "emergency powers." He signed an edict combining four provinces (Sind, Baluchistan, West Punjab and Northwest Frontier Province) and several princely states into one unit called West Pakistan (pop. 33.5 million). He put his civil servants to work on what Pakistan's Constituent Assembly had for seven years failed to achieve-a constitution...
None of his own totalitarian activity, which his strong right-hand man, Major General Mirza, defines as "controlled democracy," appeals much to Ghulam Mohammed. A man disabled by a stroke and half-paralyzed, trained by crack British civil servants to rule by law, Ghulam does not really like being a dictator. He sometimes talks about reconvening the Constituent Assembly-which he dissolved last October-and about calling for Pakistan's first general elections. Ghulam's advisers argue, however, that restoring democracy would mean restoring chaos. The Federal Court ruled fortnight ago that Ghulam's "controlled democracy...