SHEIKH KHALIFA BIN ZAYED AL NAHYAN: LEADER OF GREAT VISION

Mehmood-Ul-Hassan Khan

The People of Pakistan have special respect and regards to H.H. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan President of United Arab Emirates for his generous humanitarian assistance in the time of our national crises. On his sixth accession November 3, Pakistan wishes him good health and success in his whole life. In Pakistan he is termed as the icon of vision, wisdom, knowledge, and brotherhood.

Through his immaculate planning the sands of desert has been converted into caravans of socio-economic development. The storms have been tamed into stability and sustainability of macro-economy. Thanks to him that United Arab Emirate has become hub of trade, investments, services sector and tourism.

H.H. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan President of United Arab Emirates has completed his sixth anniversary accession on November 3, 2010. The Federal Supreme Council unanimously elected Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan as the UAE President in November 2004. He is pursuing the legacy and mission of the late Sheikh Zayed.

Intelligentsias of Pakistan are of the opinion that Sheikh Khalifa is a hopeful and passionate leader and succeeded to fulfill his long waited dreams of prosperity, stability, strong armed forces and above all participatory electoral system that formed the FNC in UAE. In order to motivate and increase massive public participation he launched a number of prizes to support the development programmes inside the emirate, including the Khalifa Education Prize, Khalifa Excellence Prize, and the Khalifa Fund to support small and medium enterprises.

Through his diversified but integrated effective policies in the fields of education, housing, health, and the last but not the least development he won the hearts and minds of the UAE people. He provided them homes through the Sheikh Khalifa Housing Project. He initiated many mega projects in urban and as well as rural areas throughout the UAE.
“From the shores of Gulf to icy areas of Europe, from rocky plains of Central Asia to green fields of Asia and from watery islands of Far East to barren parts of Africa every region has benefitted from his infinite humanitarian mission. Under his directives, relief aid has been provided to the victims of natural disasters worldwide and deserving people without any discrimination of caste, color, faith or religion”.

Recent series of floods in Pakistan played havoc to our socio-economic fabric and in response to the appeal of the government of Pakistan, he ordered for the immediate supplies of relief goods. The government of UAE and many prominent organizations extended unlimited support for rescue, recovery and rehabilitation efforts in Pakistan. Now, in the most flood affected areas of Pakistan, displaced people term H.H. Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan as “Angle of Mercy”.

He took personal interest to build schools, hospitals, and health centers in many parts of the world. There are more than 200 social welfare projects in Pakistan.

Sheikh Khalifa has been instrumental to bring socio-economic revolution in his country. He formulated UAE’s trade policy based on free economy, openness and facilitation of trade exchange and investments and now UAE is one of the ideal destinations for foreign direct investments and has become hub of all sorts of business and commercial activities. In a short span of time, under his visionary leadership the United Arab Emirates has been declared number one among the Middle Eastern countries in terms of “Prosperity” according to the latest edition of the Legatum Prosperity”.

Again thanks to the immaculate leadership of Sheikh Khalifa through which the government of the UAE succeeded to tackle the bad multiplier effects of ongoing global economic recession and financial crunch in the country. He introduced many meaningful socio-economic policies and financial reforms and ultimately achieved stability and sustainability in the macro-economy. He followed infrastructure development, introduced strong regulatory mechanism and the last but not the least prologue of structural reforms in the UAE which are now paying the dividends. Under his far-sightedness in investment promotion, regulation and monitoring of credit, immaculate planning mechanism and institutionalization of scientific research, UAE has become most technological driven economy. His economic model transformed the UAE successfully from the stage of gradual labour-intensive to a new stage of strong industry.

He institutionalized rationale policies of the central bank, high level of corporate governance, crisis, total quality and human resource management in commercial banking, labour and business friendly policies. According to the latest Global Competitiveness Report (2010) by the World Economic Forum, UAE has been included in the most advanced stage of “innovation-driven economies” in the world for the second consecutive year. Standard & Poor’s believes that the UAE authorities have a strong incentive, as well as willingness and capacity, to preserve the stability of their banking sector. The recently data of the central bank shows that the total assets (net of provisions) of UAE banks increased to Dh1,554.4 billion in July from Dh1,538.8 billion.

He initiated splendid reforms in education sector which are now paying dividends. UAE has been ranked number one in the Gulf for its high levels of literacy rate. Thanks to the result-oriented policies of Sheikh Khalifa to women empowerment which is continuously on the rise in the UAE.

H.H. Sheikh Khalifa has articulated to resolving the regional and international geo-political and geo-strategic issues. He worked very hard for achieving harmony, cooperation and coordination among all the Muslim countries and strengthened the brotherly ties in the Arab world. He instructed to follow a balanced, forward-looking and dynamic foreign policy which must be based on conflict resolution, dialogue, diplomacy and deterrence. The start of peaceful nuclear energy program is the grand success of his foreign policy. Now UAE is playing a key role in regional as well as international issues.

President of the United Arab Emirates is taking proactive role of the peace process of Middle East, peaceful pursuit of nuclear energy program, NPT, Gulf region security issue, security flash point Afghanistan and other issues. He is instrumental in the matter of energy security and heritage protection of UAE as well as environment/climate change and peacekeeping tasks.