The members of Upper House of the Parliament elected by a majority vote the government’s candidate Sadiq Sanjrani as Chairman Senate on Friday. The election was held through secret ballot as per the Senate election rules. Out of total 98 votes, government’s candidate Senator Sadiq Sanjrani secured 48 and PDM’s candidate Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani fetched 42 while seven votes had been rejected. After, a hot debate on the controversial rejection of seven votes, Presiding Officer Senator Muzaffar Hussain Shah announced the victory of government’s candidate Senator Sadiq Sanjrani. Later, during poll for deputy Chairman Senate, government’s candidate Senator Mirza Afridi secured the slot by defeating Professor Ghafoor Haidari of PDM by 54-44 votes.
Like recent senate polls, the election for Chairman and Deputy Chairman Senate was also remained disputed and left several question marks over the election process and Election Commission of Pakistan. The Public representatives and their political parties had gone too low to achieve their victory by applying every mean whether fair or unfair for the sake of their win. All the Political morality has been put under back burner by both sides, however, the ruling party Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which always make tall claims of high moral values, transparency and was promising corruption free Politics, had made record of lies, abuse of power and lack of protecting its responsibilities as ruling party.
As per reports, before start of polling, two PDM Senators Dr. Mussadiq Malik and Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar detected the hidden spy cameras inside the polling booth, installed by unknown persons for the sake of monitoring the senators during polling their votes. Actually, it was an act of intimidation to the senators by either side so they could not vote to opponent party. After the uproar by the opposition, the Presiding officer ordered to make a new polling booth and the voting process was started after the inspection of polling booth by government and opposition members. The opposition blamed the government for installing the hidden spy cameras in the polling booth, whereas ruling party’s politicians were accusing Opposition for this misadventure. However, it was only possible for government to do such type of childish act, because, only ruling party was having all resources and opportunities to make it possible.
Now in post senate poll scenario, government benches are enjoying their success, whereas opposition leadership has set to conceive next strategy against the government. In the case of alleged vote theft accusations by the opposition in the election of Chairman Senate, PDM is considering two options, first to challenge the Sanjrani’s victory in the court and secondly to move for no confidence motion against the Chairman Senate in coming days.
However, during the whole day election process for Chairman and Deputy Chairman Senate, there was no show up by the Election Commission of Pakistan, despite huge uproar from both sides. The President appointed a politician from an ally party as Presiding officer for conduct of senate election. The Presiding officer gave a controversial verdict and the institution responsible for all this process was absent from the scene, which is an astonishing situation. In fact, the extremist behaviors had emerged in the Country’s politics. The politicians and political parties had forgotten all norms and rules of fair play. It is high time that ECP must come up with its free and fair judgement and handle the situation, otherwise this unwise battle of politicians for the sake of politics would severely damage the country.
