Nations, conceived of as a people, as a civilisation and a culture, represent a permanent, continuous stream, with ever-changing fresh waters pouring in, that cannot be dated. They go beyond a recorded beginning, and trek on into an unforeseeable future. It is for the intellectuals, sociologists and other social scientists like the ones gathered on this platform, and many others not here, to make intelligible the broad outlines of the processes the people of this land have been through, and the tracks they are likely to traverse in future. The tasks involved here, I have no qualms in admitting, are beyond both the scope of my training and calling as a politician and as head of a political party, even as I recognise that all steps, plans, programmes and manifestos of ours must be appropriately informed by the strains you undertake to bring this unbroken, indivisible flow of a people into focus.

Nations, however, configured into a state with a geographical boundary, have a beginning and perhaps also an ending. People thus formed into a nation-state, consciously plan for their foreseeable future and take stock of their successes and failures in the immediate past. As a leader of a political party it is my station in life to address these tasks of going over the failures and achievements of the past of a nation-state and its agenda for future. The fiftieth anniversary of Pakistan as a nation-state affords an excellent opportunity to articulate my and my party’s perceptions of our past, and our resolutions for our country’s future.

A birth anniversary is first and foremost, regardless of all personal or collective bereavements and running sores, an occasion for jubilation. A golden jubilee anniversary, especially for a country that many of its detractors thought wouldn’t last a few weeks, thus calls for festivities, exultation and self congratulations with proportionate abandon. I request the audience to give a standing ovation to our country and its people on this fiftieth anniversary by standing up and clapping for two minutes. (Gap during which the chairperson also claps)

I hate to throw cold towel at this stage but must say that we shall be indulging in self-deception if we said that all went well in the past. We shall be deluding ourselves if we said that all is well. We shall be classed as incorrigible optimists if we believed that all should be well in future. We shall, I think, be on firmer ground if we reconciled ourselves to accepting the simple truth that we have only reaped what we had sown, and in future too we shall only be able to reap what we shall sow.

The first and foremost duty, in fact the raison d'être, of a state is to provide security and justice to its citizens. All other functions that modern states have acquired are later day accretions. Here our record has been dismal even by the low and measly standards of the newly independent states. For a substantial part of our national life we have been governed extra-constitutionally, still a single elected government is to complete its full term, and we are yet to pass that litmus test of democracy whereby an elected government shall transfer power to another elected government. Given this state of affairs with regard to the fundamental law of the land, its constitution, one can hardly hope for a better deal to the ordinary man in the administration of criminal and civil justice. Justice is delayed to a point where it has become proverbial for a Pakistani to threaten another that if his wish is not acceded to he will make the life of the other unbearable by taking him to the court. A major part of criminal practice has been reduced to getting the accused bailed out, while civil practice has been limited to winning the status quo. It is culpable enough that an important part of judiciary is an appendage of the executive and all voices for separation of judiciary from the executive have only fallen on deaf ears. Special courts have further undermined the judicial institutions as well as individual rights. Judiciary was subjected to the ignominy of signing on the infamous PCO. More recently, courts were packed by judges that were a disgrace to the office. A criminal minded Intelligence Bureau officer who tabbed the telephones of the highest judges had the audacity to poke fun at one of the most sacred canons of jurisprudence namely ‘justice is blind’ and code-named justices as ‘Blind Men’. Arbitrariness and corruption of the police and of other law enforcing agencies, and their patronage of crime, land MAFIA etc., was unbearable as it is, but more recently the ghastly encouragement of extra-judicial and custodial killings brought things to a nadir. Only a pairing of a Devil and a Lucifer could have treated its citizens to such diabolic excesses.

As we look forward, in my view, security of the life and property of the citizens, and provision of justice, ought to be one of the top items on our agenda, if people's confidence in the state is to be restored. It is a welcome sign that more recently a certain degree of the respect and dignity of the judiciary has been restored, and there appears to be recognition amongst all the decision-makers in our country that the judiciary should be allowed to work unhindered. This alone, however, cannot suffice, and if people are to get early and quick justice, a massive multifaceted effort has to be launched if we are to get out of the dire straits we have got our state and our system of governance in.

Another crucial sphere of national activity where we seem to have slid badly concerns our economic development. For the common man unemployment and inflation are raging. Thousands of industrial units are closed. Exports are stuck to $ 8.00 Billion mark, when countries that until a couple of decades ago were behind us are today exporting anything between $ 50.00 to 100.00 billion worth of goods. External and internal loans have brought our state to the brink of being declared a defaulter country. Corruption has eaten into the body politic of our country and has reduced it to a skeleton. The entire social indices, the literacy rate, average age, infant mortality rate, doctor-patient ratio, etc., all paint a cheerless picture. The economic state of our country is unfortunately so bad that it has sent the entire people of our country into dejection, as they all wears a funereal aspect.

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