Daily Times

LAHORE: The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz clinched an expected victory on Thursday in an election for the Senate seat vacated on disqualification of its leader Nehal Hashmi.

Held just a couple of days before Senate elections scheduled for March 3, the contest between Dr. Asad Ashraf, who was supported by the Nawaz League, and PTI’s Dr Zarqa Taimur was being dubbed by observers as a mini-Senate election.

Ashraf won the election with 298 votes against 38 votes of Dr Taimur.

Major opposition parties including PPP and JI abstained from voting, while three MPAs of PML-Q, particularly Moonis Elahi, also stayed away from the election despite a prior commitment to support the PTI.

Talking to the media after the polling, Oppositon Leader in the House Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed congratulated Dr Asad Ashraf but proceeded to announce that he would challenge the winner’s candidature in the ECP.

PTI candidate Dr Zarqa Taimur said that the Election Commission’s announcement to declare a PML-N ticket holding candidate as an independent was illegal and against the Supreme Court’s directions.

Dr Taimur alleged that the ruling party’s ministers, particularly Bilal Yasin, had influenced voters at the polling station and polling booths by violating the code of conduct, while some members also showed their ballot papers to Yasin to prove their loyalty to the party. PTI’s polling agent Arif Abbasi told the media that the ECP had rejected the vote of Parliamentary Secretary for Transport Nawaz Chohan because he showed his vote to Bilal Yasin. He also claimed that some of the N-League’s legislators violated ECP rules by carrying their mobile phones inside the polling booth.

Despite training workshops held for legislators on casting their votes, 12 votes, 11 of which were of ruling party MPAs, were declared invalid.

Published in Daily Times, March 2^nd 2018.