Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf will announce the roadmap for the next general elections on August 14, a private TV channel reported on Sunday.
According to Dawn News sources, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N) held a meeting yesterday to discuss the upcoming general elections. The channel’s sources said that the general elections are expected in the first week of November, however, the prime minister will formally announce the road-map on August 14. Seven-member team of the PML-N, which included Chaudhry Nisar, Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, Khawaja Asif, Ishaq Dar and Pervez Rasheed, and five-member team of the PPP, which included Khursheed Shah, Aitzaz Ahsan, Raza Rabbani, Farhatullah Babar and Jehangir Badar attended the meeting, the channel’s sources said.
It was agreed in the meeting that the prime minister, chief ministers, and other federal and state ministers in the caretaker setup will be residents of Pakistan. The caretaker prime minister will neither be from the PPP or the PML-N, nor one who has been a member or leader of any other political party, the sources added. Both the PML-N and the PPP, in consultation with other political parties, will also formulate code of conduct for the general election. The meeting also decided that NAB references will not be filed against any political leader till the next elections.
The sources also said that the negotiations between the PML-N and the PPP on the care-taker setup were supported by a few ally countries who wanted politics of reconciliation in the country. Some media outlets reported that names two candidates are being discussed for the post of caretaker prime minister: Abdullah Hussain Haroon, currently Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations and Asma Jahangir, the former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association and former chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. – Nation
