Pakistan leader calls election fair, plans for incoming government
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s interim prime minister on Monday defended the widely criticized delay in announcing last week’s parliamentary election results, saying officials took only 36 hours to count over 60 million votes while dealing with militant attacks.
Anwaarul-Haq-Kakar insisted that a “level playing field” was available to all political parties, including that of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, and pointed out that election results in 2018, when Khan won office, had been announced after 66 hours.
Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, won more seats than any other in Thursday’s election, but only because its candidates ran as independents after the party was expelled from the vote. The candidates won 93 out of 265 National Assembly seats, not enough to form a government. Khan couldn’t run because of criminal convictions that he calls politically motivated.
The Pakistan Muslim League-N party, led by three-time premier and ex-felon Nawaz Sharif, secured 75 seats. The Pakistan People’s Party, led by Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, came in third with 54 seats.
The two parties, which led the campaign to kick Khan out of office in 2022, were in talks to form a coalition government.
Sharif was marked as the Pakistani security establishment’s preferred candidate because of his smooth return to the country in October. He spent four years in exile to avoid prison sentences, but his convictions were overturned after his arrival.
The vote was overshadowed by allegations of vote-rigging and an unprecedented mobile phone shutdown. The Election Commission denied the allegations of rigging.
Kakar told a news conference that mobile phone service was suspended on election day for security reasons following two militant attacks that killed 30 people in southwestern Baluchistan province a day before the vote. He said security forces last week killed a key militant from the Islamic State group behind the elections-related attacks.
Kakar said the elections were largely peaceful, free and fair, and the process to install a new government could begin in the next eight or nine days when the National Assembly is expected to convene. He said the parliament will elect the speaker, deputy speaker and new prime minister.
Kakar also said people were allowed to hold peaceful protests but warned that action would be taken if rallies turned violent.
On Monday, thousands of Khan’s supporters and members of other political parties blocked key highways and held a daylong strike in the volatile southwest to protest alleged vote-rigging. Separately, nationalist and Islamist political parties in Baluchistan blocked two highways.
Hospitalized Austin cancels trip:
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has canceled his trip to Brussels to meet with NATO ministers and work on Ukraine military aid as he remains hospitalized while dealing with further health issues following prostate cancer surgery, the Pentagon said Monday.
Austin, 70, was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Sunday afternoon to address bladder issues and admitted to the intensive care unit. It was his second hospitalization
this year in Walter Reed’s ICU following the surgery in December.
He underwent nonsurgical procedures Monday under general anesthesia to address the bladder issue, doctors said in a statement released by the Pentagon.
“We anticipate a successful recovery,” the statement said. “A prolonged hospital stay is not anticipated.”
The meeting about Ukraine will now be held virtually, the Pentagon said. Austin is planning to attend.
The Pentagon’s handling of Austin’s latest hospitalization is in marked contrast to how it handled his initial December diagnosis and treatment, which Austin and a few select members of his staff kept secret from almost everyone, including President Joe Biden. Austin has since apologized.
UK’s Rwanda plan panned:
The British government’s plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda is
“fundamentally incompatible” with the U.K.’s human rights obligations, a parliamentary rights watchdog said Monday, as the contentious bill returned for debate in the House of Lords.
Parliament’s unelected upper chamber is scrutinizing — and trying to change — a bill designed to overcome the U.K. Supreme Court’s ruling that the Rwanda plan is illegal. The court said in November that the East African nation is not a safe country for migrants.
The Safety of Rwanda Bill pronounces the country safe, makes it harder for migrants to challenge deportation and allows the British government to ignore injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights that seek to block removals.
Mideast tensions: Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired two missiles at a ship bound for a port in Iran on Monday, causing minor damage but no injuries to its crew, authorities said.
The attack on the Marshall Islands-flagged, Greek-operated bulk carrier Star Iris shows how widely the Houthis target ships traveling through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait connecting the two waterways.
The Star Iris had been heading from Brazil to Bandar Khomeini in Iran, the main backer and armer of the Houthis in Yemen’s yearslong war.
The Houthis sought to describe the Star Iris as an “American” vessel. Caribbean oil spill: Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister said a large oil spill near the twin-island nation in the eastern Caribbean has caused a “national emergency” as crews struggled to contain the oil already coating numerous beaches on Tobago’s southwest coast.
The government has yet to identify the owner of the vessel that overturned last week, Prime Minister Keith
Rowley said Sunday.
It was not clear how much oil had spilled and how much remained in the vessel. It was not clear what caused the vessel to overturn. Tobago is a popular tourist destination, and officials worried about the spill’s impact.
Pope, Milei meet: Argentina’s President Javier Milei and Pope Francis appeared to hit it off as they held their first official meeting Monday amid speculation the Argentine pontiff might go home for a visit later this year after a decade away.
The Vatican said they met for an hour and 10 minutes, a long audience by Francis’ standards.
“The pope is the Argentine who is the most important person in the country,” Milei said in an interview Monday on Italy’s Retequattro.
They spoke briefly Sunday at a ceremony where the pope named Argentina’s first female saint.