LAHORE:
All three major political parties in Punjab assembly have finalised their negotiations over the upcoming Senate elections in a bid to elect unopposed candidates on the basis of respective parties’ strength in the provincial assembly.
According to sources, of the 12 available seats from Punjab – including 11 retiring senators and one seat for a minority candidate – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) will get 7 seats, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) will get 4 and Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) will get one. The 11 senators retiring in March 2012 include seven elected on general seats and two each on women and technocrat seats. The non-Muslim seat was added in the 18th Amendment.
According to the agreed upon formula, the PML-N has been given four general and a women, technocrat and minority seat each. PPP’s four allocated seats include two general, and a women and technocrat seat. PML-Q has been allocated a general seat.
Female candidates
Both PML-N and PPP have asked female applicants to gather support for their Senate candidature and show their strength to party leadership before the election date, March 2.
PML-N’s female applicants are courting PML-Q dissidents for support while PPP’s applicants are in talks with PML-Q members to garner support for their candidature.
Of the 81 members initially elected to Punjab Assembly on PML-Q ticket, 38 remain with the party – the remaining formed a ‘unification bloc’ which stands with the PML-N.
Coalition negotiations
Sources add that coalition partners, PPP and PML-Q, have also finalised their negotiations over the allocation of Senate seats. PML-Q, which will see 20 of its senators retire in March, has managed to solicit five seats for itself – one from Islamabad, one from Punjab, and three from Balochistan.
The arrangement was confirmed by PML-Q’s parliamentary leader in Punjab Assembly, Chaudhry Zahiruddin Khan.
Sources added that party’s former senator, Syed Mushahid Hussain, will be nominated, and elected unopposed, from Islamabad.
Twice as many
The PML-N will reap the benefit of its majority in Punjab since only one of its senators, Ishaq Dar, will retire while the party will have seven new seats in the upper house, taking its total strength in the Senate post March to 13, from the current 7.
Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah confirmed that on the basis of its strength in the provincial assembly, PML-N will, most probably, elect unopposed candidates for seven seats in the upcoming Senate elections.
PPP’s Tanvir Ashraf Kaira confirmed that his party would get four seats from Punjab in upcoming Senate elections. Of the party’s five senators graduating in March, one, Dr Babar Awan, belonged to Punjab.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 1st, 2012.
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And what does this poor nation get out of this exercise??? six more years of high inflation, record unemployment, no house, no food, no clothes....