Presidency
Prime minister Suhrawardy and his legal team drafted and imposed the 1956 Constitution of Pakistan, replacing the official title of Governor-General of Pakistan by the President of Pakistan. For almost nine years after the nation's independence, the country's political system was driven by Parliamentary democracy. The Pakistan Parliament unanimously elected Iskander Mirza as the first President of Pakistan, although the duties and powers associated with the Governor-General office did not change to a great extent.
President Mirza, an Establishment-backed president, widely lacked the parliamentary spirit, distrusting the civilians to ensure the integrity and sovereignty of country. His presidency was marked by great political instability, civil unrest, and immigration problems. The electricity problems in West Pakistan brought his government nearly to an end, prompting Prime minister Suhrawardy to establish the plan for nuclear power in the country. Relations with the United States and Soviet Union deteriorated quickly, and problems with India also mounted.
The One Unit programme collapsed after the Provinces of West Pakistan opposed integration in one provisional state. The provinces retained their current status, nationalists also forced Mirza to give state recognition of their languages as well in the constitution. Under his presidency, Mirza dismissed his elected prime ministers, including Suhrawardy, also a Bengali from East Pakistan.
Read more about this topic: Iskander Mirza
Famous quotes containing the word presidency:
“I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Some of the offers that have come to me would never have come if I had not been President. That means these people are trying to hire not Calvin Coolidge, but a former President of the United States. I can’t make that kind of use of the office.... I can’t do anything that might take away from the Presidency any of its dignity, or any of the faith people have in it.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“... how often the Presidency has simply meant that a man shall be abused, distrusted, and worked to death while he is filling the great office, and that he should drop into unmerited oblivion when he has left the White House ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)