ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar on Friday discussed his interim administration’s commitment to achieving a democratic transition through general elections in the country during a meeting with United States Ambassador Donald Blome, confirmed an official statement from the PM House.
The country is moving toward national polls that were originally scheduled for November. However, the electoral contest is widely expected to be delayed since the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) first plans to redraw federal and provincial constituencies on the basis of the latest digital census, with the process likely to continue until mid-December.
The ECP has already started consulting all major political parties over delimitation and other issues while also extending assurances that elections will be held “as soon as possible.”
“The prime minister emphasized that the caretaker government’s main responsibility is to assist the Election Commission of Pakistan in the electoral process and provide constitutional continuity during the period of democratic transition,” said the official statement issued after Kakar’s meeting with the US envoy.
The American ambassador also held a meeting with Pakistan’s Chief Election Commissioner Sikander Sultan Raja a day earlier in which he reiterated Washington’s support for free and fair elections in the country.
Meanwhile, former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has decried election postponement while calling ECP’s delimitation timetable “malicious and a clear deviation from the constitution” which requires national polls to be held within 90 days after the dissolution of the National Assembly.
Khan himself is serving a three-year sentence in a graft case in a high security jail. Aside from his imprisonment, the PTI leader has also been barred from assuming any public office for five years.
Independent analysts have raised concerns about the credibility of the impending elections due to Khan’s continued incarceration, given his status as one of the nation’s most prominent political figures.
