Adil Najam
Just got an email from reader Adnan Ahmad (thanks) informing me that former President of Pakistan and veteran civil servant Ghulam Ishaq Khan (GIK), died today after a bout of pneumonia. (Historic pictures of GIK’s career in Pakistan politics, here).
According to an AP Report:
Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Pakistan’s president from 1988 to 1993, died Friday following a bout of pneumonia, his son-in-law said. Khan was 91. Khan’s son-in-law, Arfan Ullah Murwat, said the former Pakistan president, who won power following the 1988 death of military dictator Gen. Zia-ul Haq in a mysterious plane crash, had been ill for the past three months.
Khan died in the northern city of Peshawar, where he spent most of his life, Murwat said. His funeral will be held later Friday in Peshawar. “He was suffering form pneumonia, and it was the cause of his death,” Murwat told The Associated Press in Peshawar.
Khan, a career bureaucrat, was a close ally of Haq and held the post of chairman of Pakistan’s Senate when Haq was killed in a plane crash in eastern Pakistan along with then U.S. Ambassador Arnold L. Raphel and several top Pakistani generals. Regarded as a strong-willed figure, Khan worked alongside former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif but dismissed the governments led by both in 1990 and 1993 respectively on charges of corruption and mismanagement. “He (Khan) was a man of integrity,” said another son-in-law, Anwar Saifullah. “He was an honest person, and he never gave any undue favor to any one.”
The row between Khan and Sharif continued following a subsequent Supreme Court decision that reinstated Sharif’s government. Eventually, Pakistan’s powerful military intervened in the conflict and forced Kahn to reign. Khan, an ethnic-Pashtun born in northwestern Pakistan’s Bannu district, is survived by his wife, four daughters and one son. – AP
I met him first when he was the Minister of Finance and then Chairman of Gen. Zia’s Senate and later a few times during his presidency. I was always amazed at his photographic memory and immense knowledge of issues. However, his was a tragic career of a brilliant civil servant and remarkably bright technocrat who lost much of the good will he had acccumulated by being thrust into the presidency. His political legacy was scared, at best. First credited with ensuring elections after Zia’s death and then being part of two successive dismissals of elected governments. However, he was till the end known for his honesty and his technical brilliance. I have always wondered how he saw his own legacy.
The News has more details on him:
Ghulam Ishaq Khan was born on January 20, 1915, in Ismail Khel Bannu District, N.W.F.P. He did his graduation in Chemistry and Botany and joined NWFP Civil Service in 1940. After the unification of West Pakistan into One Unit in 1955, Ishaq Khan was appointed Provincial Secretary of West Pakistan for Irrigation Development. In this capacity he represented the Provincial Government in the Federal Planning Commission. In 1958, he became Member WAPDA. In 1966, he was appointed Federal Finance Secretary and promoted to Secretary General Defense during Bhutto’s tenure. General Zia appointed him Advisor on Finance and later on as Federal Finance Minister. Ishaq Khan represented his country in various international conferences, which include U. N. Conferences on Finance, IMF, OIC and Asian Development Bank.
In February 1985, Ishaq Khan was elected as Chairman of the Senate. After the death of General Zia, Ishaq Khan took over as acting President of the country on August 17, 1988. He was elected President on December 13, 1988, as the consensus candidate of PPP and IJI. During his tenure, Ishaq Khan dismissed the Governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif using discretionary powers given to the President under the controversial Eighth Constitutional Amendment.
Khan reportedly vetoed the appointment of former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief Hamid Gul as Army Chief, appointing the moderately reformist general Asif Nawaz Khan Janjua instead. Khan’s presidency also saw the resignation of General Rahimuddin Khan from the post of Governor of Sindh, due to differences between the two after Khan started restricting Rahimuddin’s vast amount of legislative power.
Khan’s presidency was also marked by his use of Eighth Amendment reserve powers to check the government. While the Prime Minister is the Head of Government, Khan was able to dismiss the governments of both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif on charges of corruption, mismanagement, and nepotism, thereby triggering new elections, which the incumbent parties lost. The second dismissal of government exacerbated institutional and political opposition to Khan, leading to his resignation in 1993, and later to a constitutional amendment that reduced the Presidency to a figurehead. Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences was set by him and it is located in Topi, North-West Frontier Province.
Owais, We have gotten so used to expecting an utter ineptitude from people having positions of power that when we see basic things like the ones you mention above we think of them as extraordinary. If not WAPDA cief/engineer then who should know those things better. This is my observation on ourselves and not on your post.
I recently finished a book by Roedad Khan called ‘Pakistan inqalaab ke dahaanay par’ Roedad Khan a bureaucrat himself was GIK’s right man and describes in detail many aspects of GIK’s personality. Roedad was also the chief nogititator from GIK side during the confrontation with Nawaz Sharif. They went looking for BB’s support against Nawaz. BB promised it but then played double game and promised GIK continued presidency if Nawaz was removed. In the end GIK had to leave his post as the President as BB removed her support to him after Nawaz govt was dismissed. Such failures in politics plus confrontation with Nawaz brought bad name to GIK.
Apart from that he was a brilliant bureaucrat. in 1965 war with India he was chairman of Wapda. At one stage India breached a canal deliberately to submerge the advancing Pak tanks. Pak govt called on GIK to calculate how much time Pak tanks had before the water approached and they got submerged. Using his experience with Wapda and filling of hydel dams GIK calculated the time and it made the machinery come back in time.
In the floods of 1992 where Mangla spillway was discharged in emergency and caused a flash flood downstream, he visited the area as President and told the corp commander that he knows Mangla reaches its max capacity around Sept 17 eavery year. He remembered this from this days at Wapda some 30 years ago.
These are some of the things that I remember about him
Adnan mian
Anyone who forces another person to conform to a certain belief system is a “Mullah thug”… I don’t care if that person is a Muslim, Christian or a Hindu…. he is a Mullah thug.
This is a simple distinction that you don’t get.
A quintessential establishment man, along with Ghulam Faruque and Roedad Khan, the most influential pashtun bureaucrats in Pakistans history.
To me he epitomised the classic quandry of how Pakistan has not been destroyed by financial corruption but by corruption of power.
YLH: A person who comes up with absurd comments like “Mullah Thugs”don’t sound good to preach me tht I shouldn’t abuse. Go and preach to those who never read you.
[quote post=”383”]then abuses others[/quote]
Hypocrite reader – my fellow – my brother! ~St Jerome