By The Pakistan Election Commission has just announced that they’ll be redrawing the boundaries for many voting areas before the upcoming elections. This means that it’s very likely the elections will be postponed.
The election commission stated on Thursday that they’ll finish the new voting areas by December 14th. Once those new areas are decided, they’ll pick a new date for the elections.
In Pakistan, the rules say that elections need to happen within 60 days after the national and provincial assemblies finish their full term and are dissolved, or within 90 days if they’re dissolved earlier.
The government led by former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was dissolved on August 9th, a bit before its full term ended. So, according to the rules, the elections should take place no later than November.
Ever since the former Prime Minister Khan lost a big vote in April last year, Pakistan has been dealing with a lot of political problems. Khan, a former cricket star who heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, is currently in jail facing charges of not correctly declaring his assets, which he keeps denying.
The possible delay in the general election is happening because Sharif’s old government didn’t want to hold elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces when their assemblies were dissolved earlier this year. This was despite a command from Pakistan’s highest court.
Back in January, the PTI party decided to dissolve these two assemblies (where they were the ruling party) in an attempt to push for a quick general election.
Separately, on Thursday, Pakistan got a new temporary cabinet with Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar as the interim Prime Minister in Islamabad.
This temporary government is saying its main goal is to stabilize the economy. The economy is on a slow recovery path after getting a $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund to avoid a big debt problem. They’ve appointed former central bank chief Shamshad Akhtar as the finance minister, and Jalil Abbas Jilani, who used to be Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, as the foreign minister, according to Murtaza Solangi, the new information minister.
There are also other people in this temporary cabinet, like Sarfaraz Bugti, a former provincial minister, who’s now the interior minister. And Mishaal Malik, the wife of jailed Kashmiri leader Yaseen Malik, who will be taking care of human rights matters
