ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has said that the People’s Government seeks to cultivate and disseminate an awareness of Islam as a dynamic system for individual as well as corporate life. In a message to the Islamic Research Institute on its foundation day tomorrow [May 9], the Prime Minister said that the Institute can be a primary instrument for the fulfilment of this aim if it releases itself from those stereotyped notions, glib generalities, unexamined hypotheses and addictions to parochialism which for ages have chained the inquiry and fettered the thinking of Muslims on Islam.

[Meanwhile, as reported by news agencies from Beirut,] Elias Sarkis, Maronite-Catholic Governor of the Lebanese Central Bank, was today [May 8] elected President of Lebanon by 66 of the 69 deputies assembled in Beirut’s improvised Parliament while three deputies abstained. Mr Sarkis is supported by Lebanon’s Right-wing circles and Syria, while no votes were cast for Mr Raymond Edde, candidate of the radical Leftists. The new President is said to be lodged in a hotel… . The hotel was guarded by Security forces and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs of neighbouring buildings.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2026