PTI hopes to bag another Senate seat

General seat had been vacated after PPP’s candidate resigned from party

PESHAWAR: The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is hopeful of further increasing its burgeoning strength in the upper house of Parliament after a senator from an opposition party effectively relinquished his seat after quitting his parent party.

Pakistan Peoples Party’s former Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) president Khanzada Khan recently decided to quit the party and thereby automatically relinquish his seat in the Senate.

Khanzada had been elected to the upper house of parliament on a general seat from K-P on a PPP ticket during the March 2015 senate elections. His six-year tenure was due to last until March 2021 but he brought his term in the assembly to a premature end.

PTI govt mulls incentives to revive construction sector

 The PPP member developed differences with the party leadership over not being awarded a ticket for the national assembly during the July 2018 general elections. The differences widened to a point that he eventually decided to leave the party.

Having been elected on a general seat, his seat is now up for grabs.

The loss of Khanzad meant that the PPP’s strength in the upper house of parliament fell to just 19 senators. However, it is not enough to dislodge the PPP has the single largest party in the Senate having larger numbers than the 16 senators boasted by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the PTI who have just 14 senators.

But with the vacant general seat set to undergo re-election on November 26, the PTI — which enjoys a majority in K-P — is salivating at the chance of boosting its strength in the upper house.

K-P has as many as 23 seats in the Senate while the erstwhile federally administered tribal areas (Fata) — which have now been merged into the province — enjoy a further eight seats.

Of the seats from K-P, the PTI now has 11, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) has two, the PPP has two, the PML-N has two, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has two and the Awami National Party (ANP) has one.

PTI govt plans to abolish 3% VAT on 32 goods

PTI sources say that the PTI has 94 members in the 145 member house, which translates as 65 per cent. However, this is more than the 73 votes required to ensure election.

Hence, when the elections on November 26 commence, the PTI will be in a strong position to ensure that one of their members is elected into the upper house, the party source said, adding that the only mathematical outcome is a PTI victory.

Khanzada could be elected in 2015 because he managed to secure support from 42 independent candidates in the K-P Assembly and the favour of other opposition parties. However, even if any opposition candidate manages to muster similar support in the upcoming elections, it will be insufficient to guarantee a place in the upper house, the source said.

What made Khanzada’s election all the more surprising was the fact that the party had at the time had just six seats in the provincial assembly. Today, it has just five members.

The PTI source, however, suggested that the party may try and woo Khanzada by handing him a ticket for the Senate seat again.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 5^th, 2019.