Daily Times

After holding elections on 52 seats on March 3, the 104-seat strong house is scheduled to meet on Monday (today) at 10am to elect its new chairperson and deputy chairperson.

With the high-profile election due today, the capital remained a busy city over the weekend. Three major parties – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) – held multiple meetings and telephonic conversations – mostly on WhatsApp. None of them at ease to nominate and get elected the candidate of their own for the top slot.

After days of contemplating and hobnobbing with different parties from both the treasury and the opposition benches, PPP finally announced its support for Mohammad Sadiq Sanjrani, the ‘independent’ Senator-elect from Balochistan, for the slot of the Senate chairperson. He comes from the group of ‘independents’ supported by Mir Jan Jamali and co who affected recent change in Balochistan government. Despite the well-founded fact that these ‘change mongers’ had genuine grievances with the central leadership of PML-N, support for them by the hidden powers cannot be discounted. This is the reason why the ‘Giant Six’ – G-6 – group of young senators-elect is being considered the proxies of the hidden powers who won’t let Nawaz get total control of the upper house.

This very fact made it difficult for both PPP and PTI to run their own candidates parallel to the G-6. It would have been difficult anyway, for PTI to nominate a candidate of its own and hope victory with limited numbers that they have in the Senate, especially when they had shut all the doors for consorting with any other party be it JUI-F, PkMAP, PPP or even JI that has just two seats in the Senate. For PPP, it was not very difficult to make alliances considering its highly flexible political strategy. But this party has learned its lesson to never try swimming against the tide. The most powerful tide, it is clear, is coming from the direction of those who can’t be seen. However, true to its time-tested practice, it always gives half of the pie after making sure it gets quarter of the pie in return. The consensus candidate of the ‘combined’ opposition parties, thus, comes from PPP and that seems to be a deal that PTI cannot refuse. Too little space available to PTI to refuse it anyway.

In order to maintain its fig leaf, the so-called and self proclaimed ‘anti-establishment’ party till 2012-13 had to invent something. The Baloch card came in handy, which was readily embraced by the PTI too. It is only a pleasant coincidence that the G-6 comes from Balochistan, the ‘patriotic’ Balochistan. As the narrative goes, Mr. Sanjrani would be the first Baloch to ever head the upper house of the Parliament, which has traditionally been headed by Sindhis (four times), from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (twice), and a Punjabi (once). So far, no Baloch and no Mohajir has ever headed this house.

By the time this report was filed, a party source privy to the decision making process in the PML-N was adamant that the party would support Hasil Bezinjo, a Baloch from PML-N’s coalition partner National Party. The party, however, had told the media in the evening on Sunday that Nawaz Sharif would announce consensus candidates for the slots of Senate chair and deputy chair on the morning of Monday, just before the election.

Running a Baloch candidate would neutralise the Baloch card played by the ‘combined’ opposition, and if won, it would reinforce the image that nothing is going to break PML-N or its alliance with partners.

The slot of deputy chair, however, remains a matter of negotiations as of now. There are strong rumours in PML-N quarters that offer has been made to the MQM for this slot in order to get their precious five votes, while the quarters of combined oppositions were confident till the mid night Sunday that a deal would soon be sealed with MQM.

With MQM, things are not so straightforward. There is a split within its ranks, with couple of senators-elect wanting to go in the opposition camp while the group led by Farooq Sattar pushing to join the PML-N camp. Till late at night on Sunday, a meeting between G-6 and MQM dissidents was still awaited. If Sattar prevails, he may get the slot of deputy chair for the first ever Mohajir in Pakistan’s history.

The big question for PML-N would be: if Nawaz Sharif announces its candidate for Senate chair, would it be challenged by someone having some encouragement from those who normally do such manipulation? In the wake of the landmark judgement by the SC just before the Senate elections whereby all decisions made by the disqualified Nawaz were made null and void, how far the candidature of those whose names would be announced by him may hold the ground remains to be seen.

Everything is not milk and honey for the PML-N. The party is not able to field a candidate from its own ranks either for the chair or the deputy chair despite the fact that it emerged as the largest party in March 3 election.

The biggest take away from this situation is: none of the three major parties is able to field its own candidate for the top position of the upper house of the Parliament. Such is the power of chaos! What if the next National Assembly that comes after the general elections in 2018 – if they happen that is – is hung to the extent that none of the major parties are able to field their own candidate for the position of the Prime Minister?

Published in Daily Times, March 12^th 2018.