ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s interior minister Rana Sanaullah said on Wednesday there was growing consensus that the next caretaker prime minister should be a politician instead of a retired judge or bureaucrat.
The country’s coalition administration will cease to exist next month since the national and provincial assemblies are scheduled to complete their five-year constitutional tenure in August.
Leading political factions in the outgoing government have started deliberating on the issue, with local media reporting recently that the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party proposed the name of finance minister Ishaq Dar to head the coalition setup.
However, the PML-N allies expressed reservations over the name and even some of its own members objected to it publicly.
“It is not just my [political] party but everyone is saying this that only a politician should be appointed as caretaker prime minister,” Sanaullah said during an interview with Samaa TV. “It should not be a technocrat or a retired judge or bureaucrat.”
He said it was a false impression that technocrats appointed by political parties acted as neutral players while running caretaker setups.
The interior minister said the government had already empowered the upcoming caretaker administration to take important decisions for the smooth functioning of the economy and to attend to other significant governance issues.
