“A creative, innovative and incorruptible leadership is needed to meet the challenges confronting Pakistan today. The goal can be achieved by following the vision of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan.” These views were expressed at the concluding session of a two-day international conference on “Pakistan: Challenges to Democracy, Governance and National Unity” organised by the Punjab University Pakistan Study Centre (PSC) and Department of History.
Principal Organiser Dr Qalb-i-Abid and Conference Secretary Massarrat Abid thanked the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and PU for providing substantial financial support for the conference. The conference was divided into seven sessions in which more than 40 scholars from US, Germany, France, Russia, Sweden, Turkey and Pakistan presented their research papers.
Eminent international scholars of Pakistan Studies; Stephen McDowell from USA, Tatiana Oranskaia from University of Hamburg, Germany, Jean-Luc Racine and Michel Boivin from France, Vyacheslave Y Belokrentsky and Vladimir Sotnikov from Russia, and Ihsan Yilmaz, Necdet Tosun and Salim Cevik from Turkey participated in the last day of the conference. Eminent social scientists of Pakistan Hassan Askari Rizvi, Rasool Buksh Rais, Muhammad Waseem, Sajjad Naseer and Tariq Rahman also presented their ideas.
The scholars observed that Jinnah had given clear guidelines on how Pakistan should manage its affairs 64 years ago; he had outlined the roles the bureaucracy, army, politicians and other state institutions would play for a democratic and prosperous Pakistan. Had those guidelines been followed, Pakistan would not have landed into the present crises, they said.
