Tardy K-P lawmakers vote for president

No surprises as PTI’s nominee gets the expected vote

PESHAWAR: Despite his claims of being able to punch above the combined parliamentary weight of his party and allies, the ruling party’s presidential candidate got just the expected number of votes in a poll which saw the tardiness of lawmakers on display for a key vote.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly Hall had been declared as a polling station for the presidential elections where elected lawmakers of the province could cast their votes.

Of the 124 seats in the K-P assembly, currently only 112 seats are filled and 12 lay vacant owing to postponed, cancelled and vacated seats. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has a strength of 79 seats in the house while the opposition has 33 seats.

PTI’s presidential candidate Dr Arif Alvi secured 78 votes out of the total 111 votes cast. Two votes were rejected after they were declared as invalid.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who was the presidential candidate of the joint opposition, could only muster 26 votes. His votes were divided owing to the fact that the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) insisted on contesting the elections with their candidate Aitzaz Ahsan bagging five votes.

As per the formula for the Presidential Elections, Alvi carried 41 votes, Rehman 14 votes and Ahsan three votes.

The election in the house was overseen by Justice Waqar Ahmed Seth, the Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court since he was the presiding officer of the elections.

Polling was scheduled to start at 10am and staff of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was ready at the scheduled time with all arrangements in place.

However, officials had to wait a bit for the first lawmaker to make it to the assembly and cast their vote and the first vote was not polled before 10:20am.

Chief Justice Seth told members that he and his staff were present in the hall on time but the members were late.

PPP’s Nighat Orakzai was the first lawmaker to cast her vote in Tuesday’s elections. Curiously, no polling official was present when she did cast her vote.

Earlier, before the commencement of the polling, the presiding officer had announced the procedure for polling the vote and warned voters not to leave any mark or sign on the ballot paper since it would void their vote.

"Voters have to mark a ‘cross’ on the ballot paper. Any other mark on the ballot paper from the voter's side would invalidate the vote," Chief Justice Seth announced.

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) lawmakers including Sardar Idrees, Ziaur Rehman and Soobia Shahid did not arrive in the hall until later in the afternoon and cast their votes after 2:30pm.

One lawmaker, though, never turned up for the elections.

Independent lawmaker Amjad Afridi failed to make it to the K-P Assembly to cast his vote.

With polling schedule to close at 4pm, ECP officials at 3:55pm made the last announcement to call Afridi in to cast his vote was made.

As the clock struck 4pm, the polling process was stopped.

The ballot box’s seals were then opened in front of the polling agents and the votes were thoroughly checked for marks and signs and then counted by the presiding officer.

Heavy contingents of Police and the Frontier Constabulary were deployed around the assembly building and inside it.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2018.