Page 199 - Muzaffargarh Gazzetteer

president of the party. He strongly supported Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah in
the Presidential Elections of 1964 against Ayub Khan. Disenchanted by the
heavy-handed dictatorial regime, he set about gathering together all
opposition parties under one banner. His first foray into building an
opposition coalition resulted in the highly effective Democratic Action
Committee, which prepared the ground for the fall of the seemingly solidly
entrenched Ayub Khan in a popular uprising. The success of this alliance
turned out to be a role model for other pro-democracy movements that he
later became involved in.

In 1969, he founded his own party with the collaboration of four other parties
and named it as Pakistan Jamhuri Party. Nawabzada's next crack at alliance-
building came in 1977 in the shape of the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA)
against the first democratically elected government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In
the elections of 1977, he was elected as the Member National Assembly but
following the party policy, refused to take oath. He was one of those
politicians who negotiated with the PPP government for holding new
elections. However, unfortunately, when the government and the PNA had
reached an agreement to hold fresh elections, General Zia-ul-Haq imposed
martial law. Nawabzada initially allowed his party to join General Zia's
regime, but he soon started realising the true nature of the authoritarian
regime and wasted no time in distancing himself from it. In the 1980s,
Nawabzada began assembling democratic forces to challenge the regime. This
resulted in the formation of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy
(MRD), which developed into a highly successful grassroots pro-democracy
movement. In 1983, the MRD launched a successful countrywide civil
disobedience movement that was ruthlessly suppressed by the regime.
Thousands were killed or imprisoned, and Nawabzada had to remain under
house arrest for around 5 years.

Owing to the momentum created by the MRD movement, and few other
factors, General Zia had to lift Martial Law in 1985. After his demise,
elections were held in 1988 in which Nawabzada was also elected as Member
National Assembly. Once again, he chose to sit on opposition benches in the
Benazir Bhutto’s PPP-led government. He even participated in the
presidential election of 1988 in which Ghulam Ishaq Khan came out
victorious by securing 348 of the 446 votes cast by an electoral college
consisting of both houses of the Parliament and the assemblies of Pakistan's
four provinces, whereas Nawabzada received 91 votes. However, he made up
with Ms. Bhutto during her second term of office in 1993 and became Chair
of the Kashmir Committee, travelling widely to publicise the Kashmir issue.

His final act as an anti-establishment figure was the formation of the Alliance
for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) in 2000 against General Musharraf
who had seized power in a military coup a year earlier. However, to the
General’s good fortune, even before the alliance could have threatened his

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