| Sharif wants talks with all parties to reach deal on caretaker PM |
LAHORE President Nawaz Sharif has said that consultations should be held with all parties, both within and outside parliament, on the formation of a neutral interim set-up.
“The caretaker prime minister set-up should be formed after consultations with all stakeholders,” he told reporters after presiding over a meeting of the party’s Punjab district leaders on Wednesday.
The 20th Amendment passed early this year provides for an independent Election Commission and a neutral interim set-up to oversee the next elections. It binds the government to consult the opposition on both the issues.
Sharif welcomed the appointment of Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim as Chief Election Commissioner and said institutions should be strengthened so that no-one could dare rig the polls.
He said the PML-N was ready to face any political party in the elections, adding that only time would decide who would give tough time to whom. “Everyone will know one’s standing in the next polls.”
About holding local bodies’ polls before the general elections, he said his party had always been in favour of local councils while the PPP never held these polls whenever it came to power.
Meanwhile, social media has unleashed a frenzy of opinion poll regarding the most favoured choice for a caretaker prime minister.
A survey conducted on the social networking website Facebook revealed on Thursday that a majority of respondents are vouching for prominent intellectual Javed Jabbar.
Jabbar, who was once associated with the Pakistan Peoples Party, is the leading choice amid three other potential candidates with a total number of 60 votes in just the first couple of hours of initiating the poll.
The other two popular candidates are former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association Asma Jahangir and former finance minister Shaukat Tarin with 40 and 39 votes, respectively. Pakistan’s permanent representative in the UN Hussain Haroon finished at the bottom of the poll with 16 respondents wanting to see him occupy the key slot.
Agencies
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