Those who are in the race include senior leaders of the party and some sitting members of the provincial and national assemblies as well as the Senate.
The Senate elections are scheduled for March 2 and for 12 Sindh seats, the PPP has agreed to content itself with eight seats according to an agreement among coalition partners, said sources, adding that three seats will go to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and one to the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional.
A board constituted under the chairmanship of MNA Faryal Talpur has already finished interviews with all the candidates who had applied for a party ticket. The board has been assigned to shortlist the candidates and forward their names for a final decision to be taken by chairman and co-chairman of the party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and President Asif Ali Zardari.
Of the 11 retiring senators, four belong to the PPP, three to the MQM, two to the PML-Q one each to the JUI and PML-F. They are Mian Raza Rabbani, Dr Safdar Ali Abbasi, Ratna Bha.gwandas Chawla and Abdul Hafeez Shaikh of the PPP; Ahmed Ali, Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi and Abdul Khaliq Pirzada of the MQM; Semeen Siddiqui and Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi of the PML-Q, Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro of the JUI and Syed Sajjad Hussain Zaidi of the PML-F.
Sources in the PPP strongly believe that their party will retain Raza Rabbani and Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. Some insiders say that Husain Haqqani is also likely to be picked up by President Zardari for a seat in the Senate.
Among the prominent candidates who have applied for a party ticket are Taj Haider, Raza Rabbani, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Kaisar Bengali, Sharmila Farooqui and her mother Anisa Farooqui, Qazi Asad Abid, who is a brother of Speaker Fahima Mirza, Ghulam Qadir Palijo, the father of Sassui Palijo and Quratul Ain Marri, the sister of Shazia Marri. Relatives of PPP parliamentarians and ministers have also applied such as Makhdoom Rafique Zaman, the younger brother of Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Engineer Pesumal Ukrani and engineer Jai Parkash, both cousins of Sindh minister for minority affairs Dr Mohan Lal Kohistani.
Each applicant has paid Rs30,000 to the party as a fee for a Senate ticket. Makhdoom Jameeluz Zaman, a member of the board who conducted interviews of the applicants, told The Express Tribune that all candidates would be selected on merit. “Affiliation with party, sacrifices, political stature, education will be the main criteria for the selection of candidates,” he said, adding that priority will, however, be given to those who have experience in parliamentary politics. “There has been criticism that non-Sindhis and close friends of President Zardari are being elected to Sindh’s seats. And in view of this, the president has given us full authority to nominate candidates on merit,” he said.
However, sources in the party said it is Faryal Talpur who holds the real strings and the candidates have started approaching her through different channels.
MQM plans
The MQM has six members in the Senate and the tenure of three - Abdul Khaliq Pirzada, Col (retd) Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi and Ahmad Ali – will end on March 11.
The party’s Coordination Committee met on Tuesday last to discuss the candidates. According to the MQM’s Wasay Jalil, over 15 wings of the party as well as the MPAs and MNAs provide recommendations for candidates. “It goes down to the unit and sector levels as well,” Jalil said. He declined to comment on potential candidates, but said that there were no sitting MPAs or MNAs who were in the run. The party’s other three senators, Babar Khan Ghauri, Abdul Haseeb Khan and Shirala Malik, will end their tenure in March 2015.
With additional reporting by
Saba Imtiaz
Published in The Express Tribune, January 31st, 2012.
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