ISLAMABAD: Pakistani politician Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar will take the oath of office as Pakistan’s new caretaker prime minister today, Monday, the country’s 77th Independence Day, the foreign office confirmed in a statement.
President Dr. Arif Alvi approved Kakar’s appointment on Saturday after outgoing PM Shehbaz Sharif and leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, Raja Riaz, unanimously announced him as a candidate for the post.
On Sunday, Kakar wrote on Twitter that he would relinquish his position as a senator and member of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) before taking up the role of caretaker prime minister.
“It is tomorrow [Monday] at 3.00 pm,” Pakistan’s foreign office said about Kakar’s signing-in-ceremony in a statement to the media on Sunday evening.
Analysts who have closely observed Kakar’s political career say he is close to Pakistan’s powerful military, which has held sway over the country’s politics over the past seven decades.
He entered the political fray in 2008 and started his political career from the platform of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) party before joining the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in 2012. He is among the founding members of BAP, widely viewed as a creation of the military establishment in 2018 to rule Pakistan’s largest and most volatile province of Balochistan after general elections that year.
Apart from running the caretaker administration’s day-to-day affairs, Kakar’s main challenge would be to oversee the upcoming general elections in Pakistan. He will take over the reins of the country at a time of heightened political crisis in Pakistan, with former prime minister Imran Khan, arguably the country’s most popular politcian, behind bars on graft allegations and elections expected to be delayed.
General elections were scheduled to be held in November this year, 90 days after the National Assembly’s dissolution. However, the outgoing Sharif government’s decision to approve the results of the 2023 digital census means the election regulator would be required to redraw hundreds of constituencies as per those results. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) will be able to provide an election date once the constituencies are redrawn and the vote is thus widely expected to be delayed to as far ahead as February.
