Caretaker PM vows to conduct free, fair general elections

Islamabad: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar Tuesday vowed to conduct free and fair elections, ensuring no organizational or institutional involvement in favor of any party.

In an exclusive interview with foreign media, he said; “We are entering into the electoral process and the time span, which has been given to the interim government, is according to the law and the constitution”.

The Prime Minister stated that delimitation of constituencies is a constitutional demand, and we should abide by this regulation if we believe in supremacy of the constitution.

To a question about May 9 incidents, he added: “People have the right to express their sentiments under prescribed law, but we can't allow vandalism in the name of protest or if people are going violent then that kind of situation is not acceptable under any democratic system”.

Regarding alleged US involvement in Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chief Imran Khan's ousting from the power, he said that PTI members have retrieved from that allegation.

He continued to say that in some Asian states, political leaders sometimes do such acts for populist reasons. As a responsible caretaker government, we ensure that no one can meddle with our domestic affairs. The prime minister further said the PTI chairman was ousted constitutionally and there was no military coup against him.

Shedding light on the civil-military relations in Pakistan, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar further said: “Pakistani political leaders had political alliance with military for their own political interests and once they are out of the power they start criticizing the institution to shift the onus of their own failure”.

The premier further stated that only institution that has the organizational capability left with us is military and anyone who is dealing with governance has to rely on it to meet the challenges.

Talking about terrorist attacks and relations with Afghanistan, the Prime Minister said we have been facing such attacks almost for fifteen years and we are trying to counter it by kinetic and non-kinetic measures and we have been successful to manage that to a certain level.

“We are dealing with different layers of authorities in Afghanistan and some are spoiling the peace,” he said adding that some banned organizations like TTP have training camps in Afghanistan, which is a point of concern for us.

Anwaar-ul-Haq expressed hope that we will engage with Afghans despite some challenges in our relationships as it is in common interest of both the nations.

On domestic politics, the Prime Minister said political differences shouldn't be converted into enmities as this practices leads to the death of the democracy.  

Replying to a query about Pakistan-India relations, he said: “We are quite open for a meaningful dialogue with all our neighbors”.

The Prime Minister added we do want peace with India but only peace with justice, adding that: “Being the so called champion of world's biggest democracy, India should resolve the issue of Kashmir on the basis of UN Resolutions”.