বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ তৃতীয় পত্র
parties would share the seats, there would be political chaos in the country and they would be able to discredit politicians once again to perpetuate their rule. But the election results shattered their plan. The promise to transfer power which Yahya Khan made soon after he came to power, as only a care-taker government, a promise with a hidden meaning.
A West Pakistani leader and President of National Awami Party of Pakistan, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, in an interview with the Afghan paper NEW WAVE (as reported in The STATESMAN, India of August 19) said, “President Yahya Khan had been misled by the army intelligence into the belief that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League would not fare well in the elections. According to intelligence information, Quyyum's Muslim League was expected to win 70 seats, Daulatana 40, Bhutto 25, National Awami Party 35 and Mujib's Awami League only 80. It was on the basis of this information that President Yahya Khan agreed to make the public promise that power would be transferred to the elected representatives. It was a gamble that failed, but the military junta was refusing to accept the consequences."
The GUARDIAN, London on July 6, describes the attitude of Pakistan army, “there in three sentences is the true Pakistani army attitude. Callous, careless of life, indiscriminate of slaughter: and, at heart sickeningly supercilious."
NEWSWEEK Magazine in a cover page story under the heading “Bengal: the murder of a people" on August 2, 1971 writes “suddenly it seemed that Bengal's time had come. But at it turned out, Mujib's platform of economic and diplomatic autonomy for the East was too great a threat to be endured by Punjabi Leaders. Unwilling to play second fiddle to Mujib, West Pakistan's popular politician, the left leaning. Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto refused to participate in the new Parliament. And in the end President Yahya abruptly postponed the opening of the Assembly indefinitely.
In a cever-story published on August 2, 1971, TIME Magazine said, the election victory meant that Mujib, as the leader of the majority party, would be Prime Minister of all Pakistan.
It was something that Yahya had simply not anticipated. He and his fellow generals expected that Mujib would capture no more than 60% of the East Pakistan seats, and that smaller parties in the East would form a coalition with West Pakistani parties, leaving the real power in Islamabad. Mujib feared some sort of double-cross: “If the polls are frustrated,” he declared in a statement that proved horribly prophetic, the people of East Pakistan will owe it to the millions who have died in the Cyclone to make the supreme sacrifice of another million lives, if need be, so that we can live as a free people."
A PRE-MEDITATED PLAN": POWER. WAS NOT TO BE HANDED OVER:
That Yahyas military regime never intended to hand over power to the peoples representatives is further evident from the fact that it had been planning an attack upon the people of Bangladesh for a considerable time. While discussions were going on after the elections in December, 1970 the Army was preparing through all these months, in meticulous detail, a plan of how and when to launch an attack to crush the new democratic forces of the country.
