As Pakistan gears up for elections, candidates like Aamir Mughal wield unusual symbols, like eggplants or "baingan," assigned to them by the Election Commission. Mughal, a contender vying for Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, aligns with imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan's supporters, now standing as independent candidates in the upcoming February national election, have been allocated electoral symbols, with Mughal's being the eggplant. These symbols, while often bizarre, play a crucial role in identifying candidates, especially in regions with low literacy rates.
In February 1999, India's then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee noticed too big a diplomatic slight to be left unnoticed at a helipad near Governor's House in Pakistan's Lahore. Pakistani army chief General Pervez Musharraf, while receiving the visiting Indian prime minister, was wearing his official military uniform and not a ceremonial one as he was supposed to according to the established protocol.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hinted that the general elections might be held in November after saying that he will hand over the charge to the caretaker set-up next month before the completion of the assembly’s tenure.
“Next month our government will complete its tenure, [but] we will leave before the completion of our tenure and an interim government will come in,” the prime minister said while speaking at the Government College Women’s University in Sialkot on Sunday, reported Dawn.
The Shehbaz Sharif administration is caught between a rock and a hard place as Pakistan struggles to meet the IMF's requirements and faces a sovereign default if the funding programme ends at the end of June. Pakistan is an Islamic country and has had its worst inflation rates since records began being kept in 1957. In May 2023, Pakistan had the greatest inflationary pressure in Asia, at 38 per cent, surpassing Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's inflation rate has decreased to 25.2 per cent since Pakistan surpassed Colombo in April 2023.
Jai Parkash, a renowned Hindu leader and minority member of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, resigned on Friday, becoming the latest politician to quit the former prime minister's party in the aftermath of the May 9 attack on military installations and government buildings.
Following the arrest of Imran Khan, Chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, on May 9, violent protests erupted in various locations across the nation, resulting in the destruction of several government-owned properties, as per PTI reports.