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By 1965, shortly after Ayub had won a second presidential term in a surprisingly close election that pitted him against Fatima Jinnah—the sister of Pakistan's founder, Mohammed AH Jinnah—he began running into problems. Pakistan's small educated elite, shut out from power, began to turn against him, criticizing his arrogance and intolerance as well as his reluctance to delegate authority. There were increasingly bitter allegations of corruption, centering on his eldest son Gohar Ayub, who had risen from army captain to millionaire in six years. Ayub's reaction to all complaints was to impose tighter curbs on the press and his opponents. His reputation took another dip with the near calamitous war with India. Ayub's propaganda organs claimed victory when even the simplest peasant could see that that was nowhere near the truth.
When Bhutto condemned the Soviet-sponsored Tashkent Agreement, which restored the old Indo-Pakistan borders, Ayub fired his Foreign Minister—although offering him an ambassadorship as a sop. Bhutto elected to stay at home and became increasingly critical of the President, a stand that gained him wide support among students and intellectuals. Last November, Ayub finally jailed him on charges of inciting to riot and endangering the national security—clearly an attempt to head the former Foreign Minister away from a presidential challenge later this year. By that time the opposition had hardened about demands for abandoning the "basic democrat" system, and Bhutto had become one of its loudest spokesmen.
Titular Presidency. When Ayub finally gave up last week, he renewed his offer to negotiate with his opponents on constitutional reform based on "free and democratic elections." If there was no agreement, he warned, he would evolve his own proposals. Some sources think that they will probably feature a titular presidency in a British-style parliamentary democracy, based on universal suffrage, as well as more regional autonomy for East and West Pakistan. Ayub has a year to lay the foundations for his ideas while opposition leaders struggle for the succession.
The challenge with which the President has confronted the opposition is formidable indeed. By removing himself from the political scene, he has deprived his opponents of the one aim that all agreed on: opposition to his rule. To avoid the instability of the pre-Ayub period—the President once called that era "an agonizingly prolonged political farce"—the opposition will have to work together. But existing divisions among the opposition parties make that at best a tenuous hope.