The news of the formation of Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) did not worry the PPP. They believed that the nine parties would fight among themselves before the actual polls took place.

The first stage for the election process was allocation of the election symbols. The PNA wanted the plough as their symbol, thinking that it had a mass appeal as against the sword of the PPP. The election commission allocated the symbols on Jan 17 and as applied, both the parties got their symbols. Abdul Hafeez Pirzada objected to the allocation of a single symbol (plough) to the PNA claiming that since the PNA was not one party but an assembly of nine parties, every party should be allocated a different symbol. The election commission rejected the plea.

The race entered the second phase when the dates for filing nomination papers were announced: Jan 19 for the National Assembly and Jan 22 for the provincial assemblies. This was the most arduous stage. Before Zulfikar Ali Bhutto could decide about awarding tickets to the aspiring candidates, there was a rush of new entrants. This baffled Bhutto, and at the same time he became sure that he was on the winning side. Such was the situation that even Ahmad Raza Kasuri, who had claimed that his father was killed by Bhutto, was seeking a party ticket. However, Bhutto managed to finalise the list of aspiring candidates on all 460 seats while the PNA leadership was still going through a tiring process of consultations, finding appropriate candidates for a balanced allocation of seats to all the component parties.

As the date for filing of nomination papers (Jan 19, 1977) drew near, the election team at the PM House, in an attempt to give a psychological boost to the party before the actual polling, decided that the party chief, Bhutto, should get elected unopposed. The easiest way was that no paper should be filed against Bhutto. This was the very point from where the regrettable era began. No doubt Larkana was Bhutto’s home constituency and he would have been elected even if an

election had taken place. Maybe Bhutto even wanted it that way, but the bureaucracy thought that a nomination against Bhutto would lower his mass appeal.

Mohammad Khan Junejo was the home secretary and Khalid Malik was the deputy commissioner. Both of them had begun their homework much ahead of the polls. To get Bhutto elected on the very day of the filing of nomination papers the strategy involved was to make sure that the opposition candidates should not reach the presiding officer to file their papers. Maybe Bhutto did not know about this; however, the mechanism implies that he had approved the strategy, or at least he knew what was going to happen.

The PNA had nominated Maulana Jan Mohammad Abbasi to file papers against Bhutto. On the evening of Jan 18, a day before the nomination day, Maulana Abbasi was apprehended along with his five associates while they were travelling to Larkana. They were kept in a nearby rest house where they were taken care of. Perhaps Maulana Abbasi did not realise it immediately, but as the closing time for the nomination papers drew near, he felt uneasy and understood what was happening. A word was passed to the Jamaat leadership which sent immediate complaints to the Election Commission.

Bhutto appeared as a winner in a few hours. His nomination form was filed by Munawwar Abbasi, a local PPP leader, followed by jubilation in Larkana. The next day all national newspapers carried a 15cm by 20cm picture of Bhutto on their front pages with attributions such as the ‘Great Leader of Pakistan’.

In no time the scheme of getting Bhutto declared successful unopposed became evident to the whole nation. Perhaps the scheme had leaked out before the actual nomination drama was to be staged. Besides Bhutto, 19 other PPP leaders made sure that they too were elected unopposed — 15 from Sindh and four from the rest of the country. They all belonged to the ruling families of Pakistan and, among others, they included Mumtaz Bhutto (the prime minister’s talented cousin), Ghulam Mujataba Jatoi (brother of Sindh Chief Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi), Makhdoom Mohammad Zaman Talibul Mula, Syed Bashir Ahmad Shah, a landlord of Nawabshah district, Haji Najmuddin Khan Leghari, Malik Sikandar Khan, a tribal leader of Dadu, Liaquat Ali Jatoi (a landlord of Dadu district who joined Ziaul Haq after the 1977 coup), Atta Mohammad Mari (a landlord and a follower of Pir Pagaro), etc.

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