The Nation – A Heated Affair
With a heated political atmosphere, the Senate elections on Wednesday took place amid the now customary back and forth between the government and opposition benches in all assemblies. However, leaked videos, a scuffle and allegations of kidnapping in the Sindh Assembly led to both sides crying foul once the polling was completed. The victory of former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani from Islamabad will likely become a key sticking point going forward.
The problem however, is that currently there is a lack of agreement on how this vote for senate elections should have been cast by each provincial and national representative. The proponents of the secret ballot would argue that the whole reason for not disclosing the vote is so that voters can choose the candidate they feel is best for the Senate, and go against the party line if need be. This is what they will claim happened in Islamabad yesterday.
The government however, has raised arguments on how consciences can be bought and sold, with horse trading and corruption remaining endemic problems in the Senate electoral system. It is understandably hard to verify that a vote against one’s own party members is one driven by free choice, or the lure of a bribe. The initial response has been that the ruling party will challenge this outcome. This is expected. But it is also interesting to note that PTI’s candidate on the reserved seat in Islamabad Fouzia Arshad, won where Hafeez Shaikh lost.
There are questions that political parties must address internally as well. How is it that parliamentarians of the highest order made basic mistakes that led to seven votes getting cancelled? Is it really necessary to open up the ballot to more scrutiny, or a need for parties to properly vet its own workers? Will there be an internal investigation for why results did not go as expected? The government has been dealt a blow. There might be more sparks in the days to come.https://nation.com.pk/04-Mar-2021/a-heated-affair
The News- Senate 2021
In what has been described as a major ‘upset’, the Senate election yesterday saw former PM Yousaf Raza Gilani win the Islamabad seat against the PTI’s Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh. The SC case on the open ballot and the past few days of allegations and video footage and rumours and whispers, along with the narrative pushed by the PDM, had brought the Senate polls a lot more attention. Which is probably also why the victory of Gilani, the joint candidate of the PDM, came as a surprise to many. Hours before the election began, PTI leaders had expressed absolute confidence that their candidate Hafeez Sheikh would claim the seat by a large margin. They spoke of 176 out of 181 invited persons turning up at the lunch reception hosted for them and expressed confidence that Sheikh’s margin would be clear and send out a definite message as to the loyalty of the PTI members to their party. However, Wednesday saw Gilani winning with 169 votes, while Sheikh claimed 164 votes. Seven votes were discarded. In a Senate election, where members are presumably educated and had been briefed carefully on how to vote, this is surprising.
The controversy now will of course rage on. Already the PTI is pointing fingers and accusing the opposition parties of horse-trading and other acts of corruption. The videos released earlier of Yousuf Raza Gilani’s son apparently advising legislators how to invalidate their ballots will no doubt be used in aid of their argument. The PTI has said it may challenge the result, but it would be difficult to make up a loss in which seven votes were discarded, each of which was scrutinized by the polling agent.
Now, the race for a new chairman of the Senate will be interesting to watch, and of course Gilani appears to be a strong candidate for the top slot. His win has given the PDM a psychological boost to continue their campaign against the government, which will find it a bit difficult to counter the opposition’s challenge. The PDM was already talking about a no-confidence vote against the government and if it manages to get Gilani elected as the new Senate chairman, a likely no-confidence move in the National Assembly is not unlikely. Whatever the final result of this exercise, at least one point we must keep in mind. The beauty of democracy is in its independent functioning. The bicameral parliament that we have is a strong sign of a working federation. To strengthen this federation, both the National Assembly and the Senate must play their roles and all institutions must remain within their duly assigned ambit. Whatever went on behind the scenes or before the cameras, this is a big blow to the PTI. It will remain so regardless of how the Senate shapes out in the end. Meanwhile, we are left to ponder politics in Pakistan and the curious equations it throws up from time to time.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/798623-senate-2021
Dawn- Senate upset
THE Senate election results have delivered a stunning blow to the PTI. While the ruling party has seen an increase in its overall Senate numbers, the control of the upper house remains with the opposition parties — a development which is viewed by many as a much-needed victory for the PDM. The key Islamabad seat, which saw a battle between the PPP’s Yousuf Raza Gilani and Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, has been the defining moment of this election with significant symbolic and practical consequences. With 169 votes, Mr Gilani defeated Mr Sheikh who got 164 votes — a shortfall that not only has shaken the PTI’s confidence but which also warrants introspection within the party.
Predictably, elements in the government have already started the conversation about Mr Gilani’s disqualification, based on the leak of a controversial video which shows his son Ali Haider Gilani instructing someone on how to waste a Senate vote. Though the video is a dramatic last-minute twist to the Senate election saga, it is very much in keeping with the season of horse-trading, vote-buying, threats and engineering that haunt every upper house poll — a continuation of an unsavoury tradition that favours personal gain over party stance. While there may be some truth to the allegations of horse-trading in the Gilani-Sheikh upset, the unscrupulous deal-making on Senate seats is not something restricted to any one party.
The PTI must seriously reflect on how a seat Prime Minister Imran Khan himself was so confident about was lost. It is entirely possible that elements in the PTI, who make no secret about their grudges against non-elected position holders, defected to thwart the possibility of a cabinet dominated by technocrats. Time and again, there have been reports of factions in the PTI that have worked against each other, to the extent that some have been accused of engineering sackings and cabinet reshuffles. The ‘unelected versus elected’ guard in the PTI has been at war since the beginning of this government — a reality ignored by Mr Khan who placed his trust in unelected individuals. Today, those rifts in the party have come to the fore. The PTI will pay a heavy price for it, as it appears it will have to find a new finance minister at a time when the economy needs stability. No doubt, this seat is a huge symbolic victory for the opposition, and the new composition in the Senate will set the tone for the future of political discourse in the country. For all its bravado ahead of the Senate election, the government’s desperate push to have an open ballot perhaps was one indication that it feared the upset that was witnessed yesterday. One thing is certain: the Gilani victory will haunt the PTI for a long time — even if the prime minister goes for a vote of confidence in parliament.https://www.dawn.com/news/1610605/senate-upset
Daily Times: Lessons from the Senate shock
There are very serious lessons in the Senate election result for Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) and Prime Minister Imran Khan. Buying and selling of candidates is just one side of the story, although a very serious one that must be thoroughly investigated, but other decisions, most of which have come right from the very top, have played no small part as well. The most significant among them is that the selection of the candidate, Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh, was not from within PTI and, when push came to shove, party members simply didn’t accept the so-called “parachuter”. For not only was Hafeez Sheikh not from the original PTI team, or even the new PTI team that contested the election, he was just someone people had got used to seeing in almost all administrations and PTI turned out to be no different.
There’s also the fact that Sheikh has been perhaps the most aloof of all senior members of the federal government. He has never cared to mingle with his colleagues, nor has he ever had much time to listen to people’s complaints or do anything to address any of them. All this eventually led to the upset in the Senate vote. That party voters remained loyal to the party itself can be seen from the fact that their woman candidate, Fozia Arshad, won her seat from the capital. The PTI vote bank, then, is intact, it’s just the selection of the candidate that was wrong.
Then there’s the general economic slowdown. Things have been going downhill for quite a while now and people’s desperation, which reaches MNAs and MPAs whenever they visit their constituencies, seems to have contributed to the decision of some PTI members to vote against the man who was supposed to put the economy on the right track. And last, but not least, is the indefensible habit of giving ministries to people whose blunders never stop embarrassing and even humiliating the ruling party. Shehryar Afridi, for example, who first made the headlines for all the wrong reasons by swearing under oath that he had proof of Rana Sanaullah’s drug smuggling, etc, when none was forthcoming, has now wasted his precious vote for no reason whatsoever. If you are going to elevate such people to the cabinet, then such results are precisely what you are going to get. People have long said that PTI needs to build leaders and smart politicians from within its ranks instead of importing all sorts of non-elected people from other parties and other countries. Prime Minister Imran Khan must now take a deep inward look and find ways to improve the makeup of his cabinet and also put the economy on the right track, otherwise more unpleasant surprises await him. https://dailytimes.com.pk/730231/lessons-from-the-senate-shock/
The Express Tribune: Senate upset
Seems like a déjà vu. A little more than 20 months back, on August 1, 2019 to be exact, Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani had defeated a no-confidence motion tabled by the ‘joint’ opposition which had 66 members in the 104-strong Upper House. Supported by just 36 members belonging to the government and its allies, Sanjrani did not even have a snowman’s chance in hell to survive. But he did pull off a shock victory as the opposition failed to muster 53 votes required to de-seat him, despite having a clear majority in the House. Sanjrani secured 50 votes, meaning 14 of the opposition members did not vote in favour of the no-confidence motion even though a total of 66 opposition members had voiced support for the motion in a show of hands before it was tabled.
Yesterday, the history repeated itself – when members of the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies voted to elect 37 Senators. The focus of all attention though was the contest on a general seat from Islamabad for which MNAs constitute the electoral college. The candidates were incumbent Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Shaikh and former prime minister Yousaf Rana Gillani – from the government and the opposition, respectively. As against the government support of 181 members, the opposition enjoyed support from 160 members in the 342-strong National Assembly. But the outcome of the vote was no less than a rabbit emerging from the proverbial hat. Gillani bagged 169 votes as against Shaikh’s 164 while seven stood cancelled. By the way, the Asif Ali Zardari factor was pivotal, though intriguingly, in both results.
With the shock defeat looms the question: Is it a sign of no-confidence in the government? Does it warrant a fresh vote of confidence to be taken by Prime Minister Imran Khan from the lower house of parliament? Well, opposition leaders have already started calling upon the Prime Minister to tender his resignation and go. They see Gillani’s success as a first step towards sending Imran Khan packing. The government, on the other hand, insists that the Election Commission of Pakistan has failed to ensure transparent elections as directed by the Supreme Court while issuing its opinion on the presidential reference seeking its advice on the mode of voting in the Senate elections.
Indeed, there is question mark, from a moral point of view, on Gillani’s victory – especially in view of a video that went viral on social media a day before the Senate vote, showing one of his sons schooling a few MNAs on how to get their votes rejected. This, coupled with a similar audio, purportedly of Sindh minister Nasir Hussain Shah, makes the whole affair questionable. That said, the candidature of Shaikh –thought of as a paratrooper by within the ruling party – has also some bit to do with this stunning defeat. The fact that the PTI candidate on a woman-reserved seat from Islamabad, Fauzia Arshad, bagged 174 votes – 10 more than Shaikh – lends credence to the claim.
The government is understood not to take the defeat lying down. It has already decided to challenge the results in the election commission. While the mentioned audio and video make for good evidence prima facie, it will not be easy for the government to prove corrupt practices behind Gillani’s victory. The government will also invoke the number of rejected votes (seven) being higher than the victory margin (five), as tweeted by Shahbaz Gill, one of the PM’s special assistants.
Other results, meanwhile, ensured a hung Senate, with PTI being the leading party with 25 seats, followed by PPP with 21 seats, PML-N 18 and BAP 13. Of 24 other seats, 6 belong to Independent members, 5 to JUI-F, 3 to MQM-P, 2 each to ANP, PKMAP and NP while 1 each to PML-Q, PML-F 1, JI and BNP. The new composition denies the PTI and its allies a simple majority in the House even if the 6 Independent members join forces with them.
And in a bold move, announced late in the evening, the Prime Minister has announced taking a vote of no-confidence from the National Assembly. The PM must be appreciated for obeying democratic principles.https://tribune.com.pk/story/2287289/senate-upset
Daily Times: The ECP response
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) disregarded the advice of the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan and decided against employing technological innovations, using the excuse of time constraints and what not. The position it took literally amounted to saying that there isn’t enough time for the reforms suggested by the SC, so might as well allow whatever cheating and corruption can take place this time, but we’ll try and do better in the next election. That is unfortunate, not the least since that is precisely what seems to have happened during the vote.
Surely this situation calls for a little looking into. The apex court’s short order clearly said that it was the election commission’s responsibility to “ensure that the election is conducted honestly, justly, fairly, and in accordance with law and that corrupt practices are guarded against.” Now who is going to answer for the fact that the manner in which ECP conducted the election allowed corrupt practices, since there was very clearly a mysterious pattern of voting, which means that it wasn’t able to discharge its duties honestly, justly for fairly? And it says a lot that the head of the three-member committee that ECP has constituted to give recommendations about use of technology in future Senate elections is going to retire in a matter of weeks. That of course means that pretty soon the committee will stand dissolved and then the entire initiative will be lost in bureaucratic hurdles.
It is somewhat startling that incidents that have already become cause for national embarrassment, like the video of Yousaf Gilani’s teaching voters how to waste their votes, did not force ECP to become more proactive, even though the ministry of science and technology assured it that there was enough time to make necessary arrangements. Hopefully the honourable court will now investigate ECP’s lack of compliance and determine whether it was a matter of there being no way to do what was necessary in the given timeframe or if it was a matter of lack of requisite will, as many are forced to suspect. As things stand, Yousaf Gilani has won the Senate election but the matter of his son’s leaked video remains unaddressed. That no doubt gives rise to the obvious questions of ECP’s own response to the matter. Considering that it moved with lightning speed to address the controversy raised by the Daska by-election, there is a serious need to investigate its silence over all the problems that preceded the Senate election. https://dailytimes.com.pk/730232/the-ecp-response/
Senate poll outcome: edits, Mar 04, 2021
The Nation – A Heated Affair
With a heated political atmosphere, the Senate elections on Wednesday took place amid the now customary back and forth between the government and opposition benches in all assemblies. However, leaked videos, a scuffle and allegations of kidnapping in the Sindh Assembly led to both sides crying foul once the polling was completed. The victory of former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani from Islamabad will likely become a key sticking point going forward.
The problem however, is that currently there is a lack of agreement on how this vote for senate elections should have been cast by each provincial and national representative. The proponents of the secret ballot would argue that the whole reason for not disclosing the vote is so that voters can choose the candidate they feel is best for the Senate, and go against the party line if need be. This is what they will claim happened in Islamabad yesterday.
The government however, has raised arguments on how consciences can be bought and sold, with horse trading and corruption remaining endemic problems in the Senate electoral system. It is understandably hard to verify that a vote against one’s own party members is one driven by free choice, or the lure of a bribe. The initial response has been that the ruling party will challenge this outcome. This is expected. But it is also interesting to note that PTI’s candidate on the reserved seat in Islamabad Fouzia Arshad, won where Hafeez Shaikh lost.
There are questions that political parties must address internally as well. How is it that parliamentarians of the highest order made basic mistakes that led to seven votes getting cancelled? Is it really necessary to open up the ballot to more scrutiny, or a need for parties to properly vet its own workers? Will there be an internal investigation for why results did not go as expected? The government has been dealt a blow. There might be more sparks in the days to come.https://nation.com.pk/04-Mar-2021/a-heated-affair
The News- Senate 2021
In what has been described as a major ‘upset’, the Senate election yesterday saw former PM Yousaf Raza Gilani win the Islamabad seat against the PTI’s Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh. The SC case on the open ballot and the past few days of allegations and video footage and rumours and whispers, along with the narrative pushed by the PDM, had brought the Senate polls a lot more attention. Which is probably also why the victory of Gilani, the joint candidate of the PDM, came as a surprise to many. Hours before the election began, PTI leaders had expressed absolute confidence that their candidate Hafeez Sheikh would claim the seat by a large margin. They spoke of 176 out of 181 invited persons turning up at the lunch reception hosted for them and expressed confidence that Sheikh’s margin would be clear and send out a definite message as to the loyalty of the PTI members to their party. However, Wednesday saw Gilani winning with 169 votes, while Sheikh claimed 164 votes. Seven votes were discarded. In a Senate election, where members are presumably educated and had been briefed carefully on how to vote, this is surprising.
The controversy now will of course rage on. Already the PTI is pointing fingers and accusing the opposition parties of horse-trading and other acts of corruption. The videos released earlier of Yousuf Raza Gilani’s son apparently advising legislators how to invalidate their ballots will no doubt be used in aid of their argument. The PTI has said it may challenge the result, but it would be difficult to make up a loss in which seven votes were discarded, each of which was scrutinized by the polling agent.
Now, the race for a new chairman of the Senate will be interesting to watch, and of course Gilani appears to be a strong candidate for the top slot. His win has given the PDM a psychological boost to continue their campaign against the government, which will find it a bit difficult to counter the opposition’s challenge. The PDM was already talking about a no-confidence vote against the government and if it manages to get Gilani elected as the new Senate chairman, a likely no-confidence move in the National Assembly is not unlikely. Whatever the final result of this exercise, at least one point we must keep in mind. The beauty of democracy is in its independent functioning. The bicameral parliament that we have is a strong sign of a working federation. To strengthen this federation, both the National Assembly and the Senate must play their roles and all institutions must remain within their duly assigned ambit. Whatever went on behind the scenes or before the cameras, this is a big blow to the PTI. It will remain so regardless of how the Senate shapes out in the end. Meanwhile, we are left to ponder politics in Pakistan and the curious equations it throws up from time to time.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/798623-senate-2021
Dawn- Senate upset
THE Senate election results have delivered a stunning blow to the PTI. While the ruling party has seen an increase in its overall Senate numbers, the control of the upper house remains with the opposition parties — a development which is viewed by many as a much-needed victory for the PDM. The key Islamabad seat, which saw a battle between the PPP’s Yousuf Raza Gilani and Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, has been the defining moment of this election with significant symbolic and practical consequences. With 169 votes, Mr Gilani defeated Mr Sheikh who got 164 votes — a shortfall that not only has shaken the PTI’s confidence but which also warrants introspection within the party.
Predictably, elements in the government have already started the conversation about Mr Gilani’s disqualification, based on the leak of a controversial video which shows his son Ali Haider Gilani instructing someone on how to waste a Senate vote. Though the video is a dramatic last-minute twist to the Senate election saga, it is very much in keeping with the season of horse-trading, vote-buying, threats and engineering that haunt every upper house poll — a continuation of an unsavoury tradition that favours personal gain over party stance. While there may be some truth to the allegations of horse-trading in the Gilani-Sheikh upset, the unscrupulous deal-making on Senate seats is not something restricted to any one party.
The PTI must seriously reflect on how a seat Prime Minister Imran Khan himself was so confident about was lost. It is entirely possible that elements in the PTI, who make no secret about their grudges against non-elected position holders, defected to thwart the possibility of a cabinet dominated by technocrats. Time and again, there have been reports of factions in the PTI that have worked against each other, to the extent that some have been accused of engineering sackings and cabinet reshuffles. The ‘unelected versus elected’ guard in the PTI has been at war since the beginning of this government — a reality ignored by Mr Khan who placed his trust in unelected individuals. Today, those rifts in the party have come to the fore. The PTI will pay a heavy price for it, as it appears it will have to find a new finance minister at a time when the economy needs stability. No doubt, this seat is a huge symbolic victory for the opposition, and the new composition in the Senate will set the tone for the future of political discourse in the country. For all its bravado ahead of the Senate election, the government’s desperate push to have an open ballot perhaps was one indication that it feared the upset that was witnessed yesterday. One thing is certain: the Gilani victory will haunt the PTI for a long time — even if the prime minister goes for a vote of confidence in parliament.https://www.dawn.com/news/1610605/senate-upset
Daily Times: Lessons from the Senate shock
There are very serious lessons in the Senate election result for Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) and Prime Minister Imran Khan. Buying and selling of candidates is just one side of the story, although a very serious one that must be thoroughly investigated, but other decisions, most of which have come right from the very top, have played no small part as well. The most significant among them is that the selection of the candidate, Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh, was not from within PTI and, when push came to shove, party members simply didn’t accept the so-called “parachuter”. For not only was Hafeez Sheikh not from the original PTI team, or even the new PTI team that contested the election, he was just someone people had got used to seeing in almost all administrations and PTI turned out to be no different.
There’s also the fact that Sheikh has been perhaps the most aloof of all senior members of the federal government. He has never cared to mingle with his colleagues, nor has he ever had much time to listen to people’s complaints or do anything to address any of them. All this eventually led to the upset in the Senate vote. That party voters remained loyal to the party itself can be seen from the fact that their woman candidate, Fozia Arshad, won her seat from the capital. The PTI vote bank, then, is intact, it’s just the selection of the candidate that was wrong.
Then there’s the general economic slowdown. Things have been going downhill for quite a while now and people’s desperation, which reaches MNAs and MPAs whenever they visit their constituencies, seems to have contributed to the decision of some PTI members to vote against the man who was supposed to put the economy on the right track. And last, but not least, is the indefensible habit of giving ministries to people whose blunders never stop embarrassing and even humiliating the ruling party. Shehryar Afridi, for example, who first made the headlines for all the wrong reasons by swearing under oath that he had proof of Rana Sanaullah’s drug smuggling, etc, when none was forthcoming, has now wasted his precious vote for no reason whatsoever. If you are going to elevate such people to the cabinet, then such results are precisely what you are going to get. People have long said that PTI needs to build leaders and smart politicians from within its ranks instead of importing all sorts of non-elected people from other parties and other countries. Prime Minister Imran Khan must now take a deep inward look and find ways to improve the makeup of his cabinet and also put the economy on the right track, otherwise more unpleasant surprises await him. https://dailytimes.com.pk/730231/lessons-from-the-senate-shock/
The Express Tribune: Senate upset
Seems like a déjà vu. A little more than 20 months back, on August 1, 2019 to be exact, Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani had defeated a no-confidence motion tabled by the ‘joint’ opposition which had 66 members in the 104-strong Upper House. Supported by just 36 members belonging to the government and its allies, Sanjrani did not even have a snowman’s chance in hell to survive. But he did pull off a shock victory as the opposition failed to muster 53 votes required to de-seat him, despite having a clear majority in the House. Sanjrani secured 50 votes, meaning 14 of the opposition members did not vote in favour of the no-confidence motion even though a total of 66 opposition members had voiced support for the motion in a show of hands before it was tabled.
Yesterday, the history repeated itself – when members of the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies voted to elect 37 Senators. The focus of all attention though was the contest on a general seat from Islamabad for which MNAs constitute the electoral college. The candidates were incumbent Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Shaikh and former prime minister Yousaf Rana Gillani – from the government and the opposition, respectively. As against the government support of 181 members, the opposition enjoyed support from 160 members in the 342-strong National Assembly. But the outcome of the vote was no less than a rabbit emerging from the proverbial hat. Gillani bagged 169 votes as against Shaikh’s 164 while seven stood cancelled. By the way, the Asif Ali Zardari factor was pivotal, though intriguingly, in both results.
With the shock defeat looms the question: Is it a sign of no-confidence in the government? Does it warrant a fresh vote of confidence to be taken by Prime Minister Imran Khan from the lower house of parliament? Well, opposition leaders have already started calling upon the Prime Minister to tender his resignation and go. They see Gillani’s success as a first step towards sending Imran Khan packing. The government, on the other hand, insists that the Election Commission of Pakistan has failed to ensure transparent elections as directed by the Supreme Court while issuing its opinion on the presidential reference seeking its advice on the mode of voting in the Senate elections.
Indeed, there is question mark, from a moral point of view, on Gillani’s victory – especially in view of a video that went viral on social media a day before the Senate vote, showing one of his sons schooling a few MNAs on how to get their votes rejected. This, coupled with a similar audio, purportedly of Sindh minister Nasir Hussain Shah, makes the whole affair questionable. That said, the candidature of Shaikh –thought of as a paratrooper by within the ruling party – has also some bit to do with this stunning defeat. The fact that the PTI candidate on a woman-reserved seat from Islamabad, Fauzia Arshad, bagged 174 votes – 10 more than Shaikh – lends credence to the claim.
The government is understood not to take the defeat lying down. It has already decided to challenge the results in the election commission. While the mentioned audio and video make for good evidence prima facie, it will not be easy for the government to prove corrupt practices behind Gillani’s victory. The government will also invoke the number of rejected votes (seven) being higher than the victory margin (five), as tweeted by Shahbaz Gill, one of the PM’s special assistants.
Other results, meanwhile, ensured a hung Senate, with PTI being the leading party with 25 seats, followed by PPP with 21 seats, PML-N 18 and BAP 13. Of 24 other seats, 6 belong to Independent members, 5 to JUI-F, 3 to MQM-P, 2 each to ANP, PKMAP and NP while 1 each to PML-Q, PML-F 1, JI and BNP. The new composition denies the PTI and its allies a simple majority in the House even if the 6 Independent members join forces with them.
And in a bold move, announced late in the evening, the Prime Minister has announced taking a vote of no-confidence from the National Assembly. The PM must be appreciated for obeying democratic principles.https://tribune.com.pk/story/2287289/senate-upset
Daily Times: The ECP response
The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) disregarded the advice of the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan and decided against employing technological innovations, using the excuse of time constraints and what not. The position it took literally amounted to saying that there isn’t enough time for the reforms suggested by the SC, so might as well allow whatever cheating and corruption can take place this time, but we’ll try and do better in the next election. That is unfortunate, not the least since that is precisely what seems to have happened during the vote.
Surely this situation calls for a little looking into. The apex court’s short order clearly said that it was the election commission’s responsibility to “ensure that the election is conducted honestly, justly, fairly, and in accordance with law and that corrupt practices are guarded against.” Now who is going to answer for the fact that the manner in which ECP conducted the election allowed corrupt practices, since there was very clearly a mysterious pattern of voting, which means that it wasn’t able to discharge its duties honestly, justly for fairly? And it says a lot that the head of the three-member committee that ECP has constituted to give recommendations about use of technology in future Senate elections is going to retire in a matter of weeks. That of course means that pretty soon the committee will stand dissolved and then the entire initiative will be lost in bureaucratic hurdles.
It is somewhat startling that incidents that have already become cause for national embarrassment, like the video of Yousaf Gilani’s teaching voters how to waste their votes, did not force ECP to become more proactive, even though the ministry of science and technology assured it that there was enough time to make necessary arrangements. Hopefully the honourable court will now investigate ECP’s lack of compliance and determine whether it was a matter of there being no way to do what was necessary in the given timeframe or if it was a matter of lack of requisite will, as many are forced to suspect. As things stand, Yousaf Gilani has won the Senate election but the matter of his son’s leaked video remains unaddressed. That no doubt gives rise to the obvious questions of ECP’s own response to the matter. Considering that it moved with lightning speed to address the controversy raised by the Daska by-election, there is a serious need to investigate its silence over all the problems that preceded the Senate election. https://dailytimes.com.pk/730232/the-ecp-response/
Published in Pak Media comment