Quaid-e-Awam Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto founded Pakistan Peoples Party in the winter of 1967 as an answer to the dictatorial and anti-people policies of the military-bureaucratic-feudal nexus of power that ruled the country since its inception in 1947. The Party came into being with four cardinal principles i.e. Islam is our faith, democracy is our polity, socialism is our economy and all power to the people. Its program envisaged provision of basic human needs, i.e. Roti, Kupra aur Makkan (food, clothe and shelter) to every citizen of Pakistan . It advocated a just and fairer distribution of national wealth amongst various strata of the society and stood for democratic traditions, liberal values and welfare-oriented policies.
The party program coupled with dynamic leadership of Quaid-e-Awam captured the imagination of the people within no time and the Party emerged as the single largest party of the country. This was not liked by the powerful vested interests and ruling classes, which had been plundering the national resources with impunity for all those years of Pakistan’s existence. But, an un-flinched popular support and public pressure forced the military rulers to hold the first ever general elections in the history of the country in December 1970, wherein the Party swept the polls in the present day Pakistan . One year later the Party was handed over the power, albeit reluctantly, in the aftermath of Pak-India War of 1971, which resulted in cessation of East Pakistan under military dispensation of General Yahya Khan.
The next five years of the Peoples Government under President and then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto saw the country moving fast on the road to progress, prosperity and advancement. The greatest achievement of these years was the framing of the Constitution in 1973, which provides the legal and the political foundation to the nation even to this day. Shaheed Bhutto has the credit of negotiating the Simla Accord with India, which brought back more than five thousand square miles of Pakistani territory from Indian occupation and repatriated home more than ninety three thousand Pakistani soldiers, taken by India as Prisoners of War. This is the Accord that has ushered the longest spell of peace between Pakistan and India . Quaid-e-Awam’s government also held the Islamic Summit Conference in Lahore in 1974, which fostered unity amongst Muslim nations on one hand and brought economic and political benefits to the war torn and demoralized people of Pakistan.