Daily Times

Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif and other leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) have been striving for the past few days to bring about a hastily drafted constitutional amendment to prevent horse-trading in the Senate elections. The main proposal of the amendment draft is to conduct the polling via open ballots in lieu of secret ones. After the PM’s committees on the subject received mixed responses from the politicians and leaders of the other political parties, the PM hosted an All Parties Conference (APC) on Friday in the hope of convincing the key players in parliament to support the proposed 22nd amendment. As an outcome of the APC, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) have offered their support to the PM, but the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) have opposed the suggestion. This result comes as no surprise since the PTI has been arguing for open ballots for some time, whilst the PPP has been reluctant to voice its support, opting instead for airing its reservations. The JUI-F has also been opposed to a 22nd amendment because it believes that the 21st amendment unjustly singled out religious groups as the only source of militancy and terrorism. Since the PPP has a majority in the Senate, the government needs its support to pass this amendment. Even though it seems that the PML-N will try to move the 22nd amendment bill in parliament on Monday, before the elections, it is unlikely that it will be successful now that the PPP has made it clear that it will not support it.

The PM’s determination to lobby for and get this bill passed at this point just before the elections seems very strange. The elections are set to be held on March 5. Horse-trading, or the bribery and manipulation of members of the Senate electoral college (mostly members of the provincial Assemblies) by parties other than their own to gain additional seats in the Senate is a practice that has become a mainstay of the electoral process for decades. Yet it seems that the possibility of horse-trading and defection in these elections in particular are causing concern to the PML-N and PTI. Both parties include a number of members that have been part of various other parties in the past and therefore may not be unflinchingly loyal to their current parties, especially amidst the great discord that has been rumbling within the ranks of these political players. Interestingly, in these Senate elections, virtually all of the major political parties are vying for more seats than they can hope for, based on their assembly representation in the provinces. Although it is possible that the PM’s support of PTI’s drive for open ballots is to avoid yet another movement of civil disobedience and protests from the opposing party, the PML-N also seems to have realised that their own parliamentarians may defect due to dissatisfaction with the party leadership.

Given the questionable motives behind the push for this amendment, the only principled stance seems to be that of the PPP’s. PPP Vice President Sherry Rehman correctly argued that it is not appropriate to institute major procedural reform this close to the elections, particularly when the schedule and list of candidates have been finalised. Raja Pervaiz Ashraf also asserted that one cannot institute two laws for the same matter; since the lower house is directly elected by secret ballots, the same principle should hold for legislators electing the upper house representatives. The government’s proposed constitutional bill includes a clause to make the law of “disqualification in case of defection” applicable to the Senate elections as well, which will hold the parliamentarians to the draconian standard of voting solely in accordance with the wishes of their party. Thus the government is finally recognising the fallout of the vote trading and party swapping that all political parties have been engaged in throughout the history of Pakistan. The PML-N’s move to pass the 22nd amendment is aimed at ensuring its own representation in the Senate. The only fallback for the government is to hold further talks to ascertain coherent reform that can ensure the transparency of all future Senate elections. *