The swearing-in of the caretaker Federal Cabinet was supposed to be a further step on the path to elections, but the decision of the Election Commission to proceed with fresh delimitations was going to create difficulties in the path of having elections within 90 days after the dissolution of the National Assembly. The date given by the ECP for the finalisation of constituencies on the basis of which the polls are to be conducted was December 15, which is over a month beyond the constitutionally prescribed 90 days. It is at that point that the ECP will announce an Election Programme, of roughly 90 days, which will lead up to the polling day, which thus will fall somewhere in the latter half of March. That means that the caretaker government is expected to hold office until then, as will the Punjab and KP governments inducted at the beginning of the year.
In this context, the choice of caretaker Finance Minister is crucial, because the country is on a Stand-By Agreement with the IMF, which should cover even the prolonged caretaker period, and is about to engage with foreign investors through the SIFC. The choice of Shamshad Akhtar, the former State Bank Governor (2006-2009) who was caretaker Finance Minister in the 2018 Nasirul Mulk government. She has certainly got the credentials for the job, and adds balance to the caretaker PM, Anwarul Haq Kakar, who makes no claim to being a technocrat.
However, the certainty now that elections have been moved forward, must raise concerns. Previously, the only way that elections could be put off was to impose martial law. This is the first time that an apparently constitutional dispensation is going to go beyond its prescribed time limit. If the election is allowed to go four or five months beyond the constitutionally prescribed timeframe, what is there to prevent the next caretaker government going a year over time? Or the one after that, two years? The frightening thing is that there is no lime-limit beyond the time-limit. That limit is supposed to be absolute and inviolable, not a suggestion that is open to negotiation.Perhaps the pity, and the irony, is that the very constitutional mechanism used to enforce democracy, the ECP inits role as delimiter of constituencies, is being used to make for this delay.
