The Pakistan Muslim League resolved under the leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in 1947 that Pakistan will be a state that will ensure a society based on socio-economic justice and where the people will enjoy all rights and equal opportunities without fear or favour and where they will be free from want, hunger and poverty. But with the passage of time this cherished goal kept on elud
ing us and, unfortunately we stand reduced to a nation that has no direction; where the people suffer one dispossession after the other; where the state institutions have lost their meaning and face a total collapse. Perpetual deprivations have given rise to religious and political intolerance and bigotry to a degree that we have to fight extremism and militancy that poses a big threat to the very existence of Pakistan. Rampant corruption, deception and falsehood have come to stay as a culture, eroding the very fabric of our national integrity. Consequently, disrespect of law has become a social trait and a vast population continues to plunge deep into a quagmire of deprivations; every year we find more vulnerable section of society being subjected to all kinds of socio-economic miseries; and the number of the poor, who have no access to education, health and food and other basic necessities of life, is rising in multitude. These are the daunting challenges that the Pakistan Muslim League has decided to surmount with a vision that is rooted deep in our commitment and that finds direction from the universally accepted egalitarian principles of unadulterated democracy, rule of law, merit and self-reliance to venture to a destination of economic well being of the people of Pakistan without provincial, regional and racial discrimination. We also understand that half-hearted and fractional steps will not work; the only workable strategy will be a revolutionary spirit to bring about far-reaching, radical and basic change and remoulding our behaviour and conduct in consonance with the gigantic task ahead. We firmly believe in this national duty and understand that a meaningful and lasting change will come only we lend strength to the weak, make the vulnerable feel secured from want and ridding the poor of the fear of insecurity so that all the sections of society are enabled to make equal and consequential contribution to strengthen Pakistan and make its federation working vibrantly. We undertake the higher ideals of a state nationhood that will ultimately bring the people of all the provinces together rising above parochial and regional consideration. Our weapon to achieve this Pakistani nationalism will be our policy of conciliation and reconciliation that will make the people from one end of the country to the other feel that they are the custodians of Pakistan and they have the best opportunity to peacefully co-exist in the federation enjoying complete internal and financial provincial autonomy to make the federal Pakistan a pulsating, modern and forward-looking Islamic state that is making a momentous contribution to global peace. We will be guided in this onerous national duty by the golden principles of Islam, the Constitution of 1973, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the path shown to us by our founding father who, in his speech as the president of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, focused on ending corruption, bribery and nepotism and observed, “Now, if we want to make this great state of Pakistan happy and prosperous, we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, especially the masses and the poor”.
