THE delay is unwelcome, throwing off schedule a decision that ought to have been made and publicly announced by now. Instead of having settled on a mutual choice for the position of caretaker prime minister, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khurshid Shah have postponed the decision and will now meet on Tuesday for a further round of consultations. Four meetings have been held so far and agreement has proved elusive. It is not clear at this moment if Tuesday will in fact yield a name for caretaker prime minister. Impasse has occurred before — the last time a caretaker had to be selected. Then, too, the PPP and PML-N were tasked with the constitutional responsibility of agreeing on a caretaker prime minister, though in opposite roles: the PPP was in government and the PML-N in opposition. When the impasse continued in the bipartisan, bicameral parliamentary committee, the ECP selected one of the four candidates that the committee had been unable to select with consensus.

It is possible that political turmoil in recent days triggered by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s interview to this newspaper has only temporarily delayed the nomination of a caretaker prime minister. Indeed, from a democratic perspective, it would be worrying if successive parliaments were unable to select a caretaker prime minister. The post is relatively uncontroversial, the powers of the office are relatively circumscribed and the duties of a caretaker prime minister mild and uncontroversial. The purpose of a caretaker prime minister and cabinet is to prevent political interference in the electoral process by a party or individuals vying for power. In more mature democracies, the need for a transfer of power to an apolitical setup during polls has been dispensed with. Surely, agreement on a caretaker prime minister should be well within reach. A third consecutive on-time election should start in a spirit of democratic agreement.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2018