In a bid to create a level playing field before general elections in January, President Arif Alvi on Tuesday stressed the need to \u201cend bitterness\u201d and make way for \u201ccooperation and forgiveness\u201d. His remarks come as Pakistan is gearing up for polls. Last month, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced that polls would be held in the last week of January 2024 but didn\u2019t specify a date. While the JUI-F has raised objections over the timing of the elections, the PPP and PTI have repeatedly bemoaned the lack of a level playing field. Meanwhile, the PML-N is preparing for the return of party supremo Nawaz Sharif later this month. On the other hand, the interim government has dispelled the impression of caretakers being a \u2018B\u2019 team of the PML-N, adding that it did not have any favourites. In a meeting with Senator Muhammad Ali Khan Durrani at the Aiwan-e-Sadr today, the president said the upcoming general elections should be free, fair, transparent and inclusive. According to a statement issued by the President\u2019s House, Alvi stressed that all political parties and their leadership should be given equal opportunities to participate in the electoral process to \u201cstrengthen democracy in the country\u201d. \u201cDemocracy will be meaningless if people are not able to elect a leader of their choice,\u201d he said. The president emphasised there was a dire need for political and institutional unity in the country to battle challenges, such as rising inflation. \u201cBitterness should end, and a way should be carved for cooperation and forgiveness,\u201d he stated. President Alvi further said that ownership and backing were needed from the public to take difficult decisions. \u201cThe upcoming general elections provide a good opportunity to create the vibrancy needed to rebuild our country,\u201d he said, adding that political participation was the spirit of democracy. Alvi\u2019s remarks come as the PTI \u2014 the party to which he belongs \u2014 and its incarcerated chief Imran Khan face mounting legal challenges as well as a state crackdown, which was launched following May 9 riots and stand to threaten their participation in polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a bid to create a level playing field before general elections in January, President Arif Alvi on Tuesday stressed the need to \u201cend bitterness\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10335,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}