PPP, PML-N to probe senate vote switch

Opposition parties, despite having majority, failed to deseat Senate chairman Sadiq Sanjrani

ISLAMABAD: A day after Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani survived the joint opposition’s no-confidence motion, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Friday formed separate committees to find out the lawmakers who did not vote in accordance with the party lines.

On Thursday, a resolution to move the no-confidence against Sanjrani was passed easily with 64 senators backing it openly. But when it came to secret balloting, 14 members of the opposition parties ditched their leadership by either voting against the resolution or deliberately wasting their votes.

The opposition required 53 of the 64 votes to send Sanjrani packing, but in the end, it fell three votes short of passing the motion. The final vote count was 50 votes in favour, five votes rejected, and 45 cast against. Hence the motion was defeated.

To find out those who betrayed the joint opposition, the leading opposition parties have formed separate committees. The PPP panel will be headed by former prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, while the PML-N committee will be led by Senator Rana Maqbool.

Chairing a meeting of the party leaders and parliamentarians, PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif said that strict action will be taken against the party senators who had supported the Senate chairman. “We shall know who were those 14 who betrayed,” PML-N Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal later said.

The PML-N leaders said a list of the possible turncoats circulating on social media was not authentic. They said those who played “Mir Jafar and Mir Sadiq” on Thursday – a reference to two traitors who sided with British forces in the 18th century in the Subcontinent – will be disclosed.

Iqbal said August 1 was “the blackest day of our history” because the horse-trading that was seen in the Senate was never heard of even at the union council level. “Fourteen senators sold their conscience,” he said. “A patriot Pakistani cannot indulge in such activity. No Pakistani institution can do this.”

PML-N Senator Mushahidullah later told reporters the outcome of the Senate voting increased public anger against the government. The rumours of exerting pressure on the senators or offering them billions of rupees are detrimental to the country,” he added.

Meanwhile, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari constituted a five-member fact-finding committee, comprising former prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, Nayyar Bokhari, Saeed Ghani, Sabir Baloch and Farhatullah Babar, to ascertain the role of the PPP senators in the voting on the no-confidence motion.

“The committee may co-opt other members if necessary, and will also make recommendations about the resignations already submitted by party senators to the chairman,” said a statement, referring to the resignations submitted to the party chairman by all of the PPP’s 21 senators after the Senate fiasco.

Farhatullah Babar said that Bhutto Zardari had “expressed deep disappointment with the horse trading in the Senate on Thursday and decided to try to get to the bottom of it, expose those who played a dirty role, find out why the joint opposition was unable to remove” Sanjrani despite being in majority.

Babar said that if any party senator was found guilty of defection and violating party discipline would be punished. “The Party hopes that other opposition parties will also investigate the matter with respect to their senators,” he added.