Daily Times

President Dr Arif Alvi on Thursday said that Pakistan had many strengths and opportunities which should be communicated to the coming generations to provide them with a baseline and motivation to make their country stronger and prosperous.

The president, virtually addressing a seminar on the role of the Presidency organized by the London School of Economics Students Union Pakistan Development Society, said the constitution provided the role of the Presidency as a unifying force where the President was the head of the state and the elected prime minister enjoyed the executive powers.

The session was chaired by the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Baroness Minouche Shafik.

The president said that he had been playing his role within the confines of the Constitution. He said that despite the fact that Pakistan had been facing difficulties and challenges, it had many strengths which helped it to successfully overcome many crises. He said that during the COVID crisis, Pakistan used a unique and customized, home-grown strategy to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The leadership, the relevant institutions and health machinery worked in uniformity, adopting the partial lockdown strategy and supplementing it with aggressive communication, awareness and education tools.

It helped the country to save the lives and the livelihood of the people, kept our mosques, businesses and industrial sites open, and we came out of this crisis much better than our neighbours and many other countries of the world,” he added.

The president said that Pakistan advocated for peace throughout the world on the basis of equality, dignity and sovereignty and wanted resolutions of outstanding international and regional conflicts through negotiation, discussion and deliberations.

He stressed that the international community and the United Nation should play their role to resolve the long outstanding issue of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir in the spirit of the UN Security Council’s Resolutions and take stock of rising religious extremism in India, its Hindutva ideology, Islamophobia and persecution of minorities, especially Muslims.

While touching upon another strength, the president said that Pakistan took up the challenge of countering global warming and climate change despite meagre resources and embarked on an ambitious program to plant a billion trees, and later building on its success, the government launched 10 billion tree plantation drive to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, mitigate the impacts of climate change and save flora and fauna and nature for future generations as our share for a better world tomorrow”, he added.

He said that Pakistan generously and willingly opened its arm to the refugees displaced due to a crisis of international nature and was hosting millions of Afghan refugees for over 40 years, which was unprecedented in global history.