Nation celebrates Independence Day today

By Asim Yasin

ISLAMABAD: The nation will celebrate Independence Day today (Friday) with renewed resolve to work with the spirit of Pakistan Movement to make the country a true Islamic welfare state.

The day will dawn with thirty-one gun salutes in the federal capital and twenty-one gun salutes in the provincial headquarters. Prayers will be offered for security and progress of Pakistan and well-being of the people. It will be a public holiday.

National flag will be hoisted at all important public and private buildings. The main feature of the celebrations will be a national flag hoisting ceremony at President House Islamabad. President Dr Arif Alvi will be the chief guest on the occasion. Similar flag hoisting ceremonies will also be held at provincial divisional and district headquarters level throughout the country. Public and private buildings as well as streets bazaars and markets have been profusely illuminated.

National flags, buntings, portraits of founding fathers, posters and banners are also seen everywhere as part of the celebration of Independence Day. Felicitating the nation on 73rd Independence Day of Pakistan, President Dr Arif Alvi, Prime Minister Imran Khan, former president Asif Ali Zardari and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari asked the nation to work unitedly to improve image of Pakistan across the globe. In their messages they paid rich tributes to founding father Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah who got Pakistan for Muslims after untiring efforts without caring stiff opposition in India.

In their messages President Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Imran Khan have called upon the Pakistanis to stand firm and work for the progress and prosperity of country. “We need to stand united to meet the social, economic and security challenges being confronted by the nation,” the president said in his message on the Independence Day being celebrated across the country today (Friday).

Extending their heartiest felicitations to the countrymen, they said the day reminded of the immense sacrifices rendered by the forefathers under the dynamic leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. “The day is an occasion to reaffirm our resolve to live up to the ideals of our founding fathers and pay homage to the heroic struggle of all the workers of Pakistan Movement,” they said.

Meanwhile, former president Asif Ali Zardari and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, in their messages on Thursday, said that for a stable Pakistan, a stable democracy is necessary and will have to accept the supremacy of the Parliament. “We will have to respect the autonomy of the provinces. We have to root out terrorism from our beloved country,” they said in a statement on Thursday on the eve of Independence Day.

Paying rich tributes to the founder of the nation Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, both Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto said that our Quaid assured the rights of the minorities by establishing a separate state for the Muslims of the subcontinent. Zardari said that the Quaid-e-Awam Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto gave Pakistan a constitution which binds the people from every corner of the country. He said that the country is going through a very difficult stage of its existence because the 1973 constitution has been violated repeatedly.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has stressed that the value of freedom lies in true democracy because there is no other system that guarantees respect for human dignity and development of mankind.

He congratulated the nation and said that ours is a dynamic young nation, which is well aware of the value of its independence. “The nation knows how to protect its freedom, and has inherited this commitment from the independence movement, a peaceful political struggle,” he said in a statement issued on the eve of the 74th Independence Day.