The Senate elections are upon us. Yes, the Senate of Pakistan, remember that one? About half the members of the Senate are gone and done with and so their seats are vacant and need to be filled. For this, there will be an election. And Mian sahib, the Prime Minister (PM), is extremely worried about horse-trading. First, I insist that everybody, including the PM, should refrain from giving horse traders and horse-trading a bad name. There never were good horses in the Indian subcontinent and, but for horse traders that over the centuries brought us horses, we would have had no horses worth being called horses, and definitely not the sort worth trading. So, leave this noble profession alone. The PM’s sudden displeasure about how the Senate elections are conducted is reminiscent of the scene from the movie Casablanca where Captain Renault decides to close down Rick’s cafe because ‘gambling’ was going on and that, of course, while he is picking up his take from the gambling business. The Senate elections have always been held like this, so why all the sudden brouhaha? Senators are elected by the members of the provincial Assemblies by secret ballot and most of the votes are always given along party lines. Mian sahib or any other party in power never objected to this in the past. So, something must have changed, causing Mian sahib all this agitation. What is different this time around could be that Mian sahib, as well as the ‘great’ Khan, are both worried that their party members in the provincial Assemblies (MPAs) might not want to follow the party line. If MPAs decide to vote against the wishes of the party leadership, it would suggest they are not happy with the leadership and its decisions. It is quite obvious that both the PML-N that runs Punjab and the PTI-JI coalition that runs Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are not sure of the loyalty of at least a few of their MPAs. That is the reason behind why these two parties are getting all riled up about horses, traders and money. Both the PML-N as well as the coalition running Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have possibly lost the ‘moral’ and perhaps political support of some of their members and, as such, are afraid that these members might vote for candidates based on reasons other than moral or political ones. As far as elections in Balochistan are concerned, who knows what happens there? About ‘money’ in politics, money has always been the mother’s milk of politics. A bit more than 10 years ago, when I first became interested in election cycles in Pakistan, I was told that an urban seat in the National Assembly cost between 20 and 50 million rupees and a rural seat about half of that. Nobody gave me any numbers for the provincial seats but I am sure that these must also have cost a pretty penny. That was 10 years ago; today a pretty penny is probably worth a lot more. Everybody interested in the Pakistani political scene should know that people in Pakistan contest elections for one very simple reason: to make money. They expect a ‘reasonable’ return on their investment and if the governmental largesse does not trickle down in their direction, Senate elections can provide a last resort financial benefit for members of provincial Assemblies. Is it right? Of course not, but then there is little that is right with the election process in Pakistan and I am not even referring to the fixed punctures situation. First, let me put aside the money question. To run political campaigns has always required a lot of money. With modern day media penetration, the money needed has increased and this is on both the winning and the losing sides in any campaign. We cannot take money out of politics so we should at least try to make it relatively less important. The best way to make that happen is to take the financial benefits of winning out of the electoral equation. Once individual financial benefit is no longer a major factor in winning an election, we will see political parties rather than individual candidates spending money on election campaigns. That will, of course, require ending corruption, which in Pakistan is unfortunately like asking for summers to be less hot. What should be done? It is time to bring real change to the entire electoral process starting with the very basic premise of the winner being first across the post. Seats in all Assemblies should be allotted to parties according to the percentage of votes they receive in a general election. Such proportional representation will decrease the amount of money individual candidates spend on an election. A good example is the female representatives nominated by the political parties in the present Assemblies. None of them spend any money on their elections and, once elected, are like any other member of the Assembly. The idea is to take expenses away from individual candidates and put most of them in the hands of the political party. Will that make it all honest? Of course not, but at least there will be a lot less fear of horses running amok. As far as the Senate is concerned, elections should be by direct rather than indirect voting. Let all political parties put up their senatorial candidates and, depending on the percentage of votes they receive in a general election, they should get the appropriate numbers of senators elected. Of course, the timing and length of tenure of senators will have to be looked at and reconciled with the general elections. Perhaps it is time to decrease the terms of all the Assemblies to three years. Until the time that comprehensive electoral reforms take place, my advice to the PM and others worried about the upcoming Senate elections is: just hold your horses. The author is a former editor of the Journal of Association of Pakistani descent Physicians of North America (APPNA)