LAHORE: The Government is earnest in its resolve to amplify and enlarge civil liberties in the country, subject to paramount considerations of national security, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared here today [Jan 9]. The Prime Minister was inaugurating the Second Pakistan Jurists Conference. … In reply to a remark by the Attorney-General … about the state of national emergency … Mr Bhutto assured the jurists that the Government was … keeping the situation under constant review. “Were it not for such review it would not have been possible for us to restore the legal protection of fundamental rights”, he asserted.

[Meanwhile, as reported by news agencies from Lahore,] Dr Mubashir Hasan, former Fe­­deral Finance Minister … asked the Third Wo­­­­­rld Forum delegates to publicly identify the fact that without complete liquidation of neo-colonial influences, no amount of development strategies could usher in an era of economic prosperity in the Third World. In a Press statement … he said: “One does not have to be a great expert in economics … to know that the continuing backwardness of the Thi­rd World Nations … [is because] their political indepe­ndence is no more than a myth.”

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2025