The curious case of Pakistan’s caretaker government
Pakistan’s parliament has been dissolved and the new “caretaker government” officially took over on Friday, weeks before the July 25 elections.
Former chief justice Nasirul Mulk has been sworn in as the country's seventh caretaker prime minister.
The interim government is a constitutional but temporary regime which lasts up to ten weeks and serves as an administrative bridge between two elected governments. Its primary functions include facilitating general elections, carrying out day-to-day governance and transferring of power to the newly elected government after elections.
Less than a dozen countries in the world utilize non-elected administrations like Pakistan does. Others include Bangladesh, Belgium, India, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand and Tunisia. However, Pakistan’s case is unique as it has used this administrative instrument for the longest and has been the most consistent in utilizing it.
Pakistan has held a total of 10 elections since its first one in 1970. There were two periods of martial law that lasted a total of nearly two decades during this period, and there has been a total of six caretaker governments since.
Why did Pakistan choose interim governments as a legal mechanism and how have they fared? Pakistan’s second parliamentary elections were held in 1977, returning power to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government. But the results were so controversial that an opposition movement snowballed into a political impasse that led to the country’s second martial law spearheaded by General Ziaul Haq.
Democracy was restored during the third election in 1988 that brought Benazir Bhutto to power. But after the polls, the government, along with the opposition led by Nawaz Sharif, decided to enact a caretaker administration for all future elections. The first caretaker government was appointed before the 1990 elections that brought Sharif to power.
The purpose of the non-partisan administration is to establish a neutral environment for genuine elections, but no caretaker administration has ever lived up to its function.
Adnan Rehmat
The purpose of the caretaker administration is to establish a conducive environment for genuine elections, ensuring neutrality in order to facilitate a smooth transfer of power from one elected government to another. As a non-partisan administration, the interim government is mandated to exercise only routine functions of the government. However, each time an interim administration has been established – the last one being in 2013 – it has never been without rancor. No caretaker administration has ever lived up to its function of being a panacea for the acute distrust among rivals in electoral politics.
Previous caretakers overstepped their mandate and undertook major policy decisions, such as signing major loan agreements with international lenders and effecting undeclared budgets, which obligated the incoming elected governments to abide by them.
The appointment of caretaker prime ministers and provincial chief ministers and their respective cabinets of ministers were also overtly partisan.
In 2008 and 2013, new rules were put in place to improve the selection and appointment criteria of caretaker candidates in a bid to bring greater clarity to their mandates. The federal and provincial caretaker administrations appointed this year were, at least theoretically, expected to be the best exercise in this regard so far.
Pakistan’s past experience and its pluralist but rancorous political traditions have proven that despite the evolving electoral maturity, it will take more than just better interim administrations to fulfill the aim of free and fair elections. Greater trust and political accommodation backed by broad-based electoral reforms are essential in order for freer and fairer elections to take place. Selecting obscure political individuals or retired judges from a politicized judiciary to become caretaker prime ministers and chief ministers is not the answer.
The selection process – joint nominees of the treasury and opposition leaders of the national and provincial legislatures – has not been a roaring success in the past.
Recent examples, including the joint choices of the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau and the chief commissioner of the Election Commission of Pakistan in the last two years, have been denigrated by the appointees themselves. Both gentlemen are retired judges. Judges were selected despite the rationale of recent pointedly advocating preference for candidates from non-judicial backgrounds.
To choose the right candidates for the caretaker government, the treasury and opposition need to place their trust in the civil society domain that focuses on advocating greater enforcement of political rights and reforms.
This will not only strengthen political parties in their common objectives but also engender greater trust between them and the electorate for whom the entire elector exercise is held in the first place.
Freer and fairer elections will surely bring fairer governments based on stronger legitimacies.
− Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science. Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
