Mohammed Ali Jinnah, considered Qaid-i-Azam ("Father of the Nation"), intimated to Lord Mountbatten: "when I am Governor-General the Prime Minister will do what I tell him to"--Jinnah is a rare example of executive governorship by a Governor-General.
Jinnah's successors, like most other Commonwealth Governors-General, served as figureheads and did not exercise their virtually unlimited political powers.
The office of Governor-General was abolished and replaced by a President of Pakistan when Pakistan became a republic in 1956. Governor-General Iskander Mirza became Pakistan's first president.
It was his powerful advocacy of the case of Pakistan and his remarkable strategy in the delicate negotiations, that followed the formulation of the Pakistan demand, particularly in the post-war period, that made Pakistan inevitable.
If all this was symptomatic of Pakistan's administrative and economic weakness, the Indian annexation, through military action in November 1947, of Junagadh (which had originally acceded to Pakistan) and the Kashmir war over the State's accession (October 1947-December 1948) exposed her military weakness.
In the ultimate analysis, his very presence at the helm of affairs was responsible for enabling the newly born nation to overcome the terrible crisis on the morrow of its cataclysmic birth.
Under the Act Pakistan is to be comprised of a West Wing and an East Wing focused on the Muslim population centres of the Punjab (West Pakistan) and Bengal (East Pakistan) on either side of India.
Pakistan is declared a republic and the National Assembly is established as the federal legislature, with sessions to be held alternately in Dhaka and Islamabad.
In Pakistan, Bhutto appoints General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as chief-of-staff of the army.
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