Quest for top slots: PPP mounts campaign to take over Senate

PML-N has not yet contacted any group or individual to gain support

QUETTA/ ISLAMABAD:

After prudently playing its cards in the pre-election phase, the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Friday moved into higher gear its campaign to wrest back control of the upper house of parliament.

In stark contrast, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) was slow off the mark on Friday, squandering valuable hours that it could have used to kick-start its campaign to grab the Senate’s top slots of chairperson and deputy chairperson ahead of the March 12 election.

Sources said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who arrived on Friday night from Saudi Arabia, will himself start negotiations with the smaller political parties after consulting with his close aides.

No time was wasted at the PPP’s end with the party’s co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari quickly approaching an independent senator from Balochistan, Yousaf Badeeni, for support. According to sources, Badeeni assured Zardari of his support for the PPP’s candidates.



The PPP earlier managed to pick up one seat from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) -- a province where his party has only five MPAs.

The PPP will continue to have a majority in Senate, even if the PML-N lures back Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) into its fold.

Apart from four seats of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and two seats of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), whose notifications are yet to be issued by Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), Senate elections have almost concluded.

In a house of 104 members, 98 senators will cast their votes on March 12 to elect the chairperson and deputy chairperson of the upper house. According to sources, three major political alliances have emerged, which will decide election of top slots in the Senate.







The PPP has support of 41 senators. Out of these, 27 belong to the party, seven to Awami National Party (ANP), four to the PML-Q and two to Balochistan National Party-Awami. Apart from them, one independent senator, Yusaf Badeeni, also supports the PPP.





Although the PML-N has the support of 33 senators, notifications for two of its ICT senators have not yet been issued by the ECP – making its total strength 31. Out of these 31 senators, 26 belong to the PML-N, one to PML-F and three each to National Party and Pashtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party.





The third alliance consists of seven senators including six senators from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and one from Jamaat-e-Islami. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan has announced that his party will neither support the PML-N nor the PPP in the election for Senate chairperson and deputy chairperson.





Both the major parties have deducted these seven senators of the third alliance from the 98-member electoral college for the top slots. Now both the parties are focusing on acquiring support from half of the 91 senators, ie, 46 senators.

Interestingly, both parties have not included the MQM’s eight senators and the JUI-F’s five senators as their trustworthy allies and have decided to negotiate with them in the coming days.

At present, the PPP has 41 senators and is short of only five senators to achieve its target of 46 votes.

Sources said the PPP has prepared packages for bargaining with the JUI-F and the MQM and if it succeeds then the party will easily win the top slots. However, if the PPP does not succeed then it will turn to a group of independent senators.





The independent group comprising five senators – four from Fata and one from Punjab – can play a decisive role in the PPP’s bid for control of the upper house. The sources said that if the ECP holds the election of the pending four seats of Fata before March 12, then the independent group will expand to 9 senators.





The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) leader has claimed that his party is the decisive force that will determine which party will take control of the upper house.

“We will play a significant role. It will be the JUI-F which will decide which party succeeds in getting its candidates elected as chairman and deputy chairman,” the JUI-F leader Maulana Ghafoor Haideri told reporters in Quetta.





The controversy over the presidential order, which has changed the procedure for election of the tribal areas’ senators, has further deepened as the poll authorities have reacted sharply, conveying to the government in unambiguous terms that polls were not possible with the government’s proposed method.

The last-minute presidential decree, issued hours before Thursday’s Senate elections, created a controversy that led to postponement of polls four seats from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

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Published in The Express Tribune, March 7^th, 2015.