পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (দ্বিতীয় খণ্ড).pdf/৮৬৯

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ দ্বিতীয় খণ্ড
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It is thus surprising that Yahya used the issue of the legal cover as the final evidence of the mala fide nature of Mujib's intentions, since his own team had already settled this matter and passed on to more substantive issues. The matter was obviously a mere piece of formalism, of relevance only to lawyers, and it was absurd to suggest that nations might break merely because of differences over a legal technicality.

Awami League Concessions

 Mujib's terms applied only to the interim phase between the lifting of Martial Law and the passing of the new constitution by the Assembly. It was not certain how long this phase would last, but there was, no question but that the long term basis for nationhood must be decided by parliament, who would assume sovereignty through the instruments provided by the constitution. At that stage it was generally agreed by both parties that the Six Points would at least have to provide the basis for this document.

 Yahya had argued that while the Six Points had been worked out for defining Bengal's relation to the centre, its application to the west wing provinces would create more difficulties. This had always been conceded by the Awami League, whose Six Points were based on the existence, because of the peculiarities of the country's geography, of two economies within one polity. Yahya's demand for a separate deal for the west was readily conceded by Mujib, since he himself had no power base of his own to defend, having failed to win a single seat there.

 Yahya suggested that West Pakistan might need more time to work out interprovincial relations in the west in a post-One Unit region, since no work had been done on this by any of the parties there. He suggested separate sessions of the Assembly for either wing so that this task in the west could be done without any interference by the east wing. The whole proposal was designed to accommodate Bhutto, who was obsessed by the fear that Mujib would enter into collusion with the smaller parties and regoing to neutralize him. He wanted a free hand in the west, and Yahya secured this for him from Mujib. But in accepting the proposal Mujib alienated his potential support in the west, which had increased considerably following Bhutto's boycott decision, and as a result, when Yahya initiated his military operations, Mujib found himself friendless in the west. To suggest that the idea of two assemblies was basically Mujib's was to do violence to logic, since the Awami League not only had a clear majority of its own, but by then could command more than two thirds of the votes in the house behind any position it choose to take.

From Politics to Economics

 Once the format for the political and legal basis for the transfer of power had been determined there remained the more substantive question of the distribution of powers between the province and the centre in the interim phase. It was agreed by both parties as a guiding principle that the basis should not deviate too much from the final version of the constitution which was expected to be based on the Six Points. Since economics was the key issue here, M. M. Ahmed, chief Economic Advise to the President, was brought in.