PESHAWAR:
The Awami National Party (ANP) finalised its candidates for Senate elections on Wednesday during a meeting of its parliamentary board presided over by ANP provincial chief Senator Afrasiab Khattak.
The board finalised Senate tickets for six members, including three general candidates and one each for a technocrat, a minority and a female out of a total of 38 applicants.
ANP candidates for general seats include ANP provincial Senior Vice President Baz Muhammad Khan, ANP Sindh President Shahi Syed and former federal minister Azam Khan Hoti.
Meanwhile, ANP Senator Ilyas Bilour was given a ticket to contest the technocrat seat. Amarjeet Singh Malhotra was given the minority ticket while Zahida Khan was awarded a ticket for ANP’s female candidate under the “martyrs of ANP” quota. The seventh ticket will be allocated after consultation with coalition partners, a senior member of the ANP told The Express Tribune.
If elected, the additional six members will take ANP’s representation in the upper house of parliament to 11. Haji Muhammad Adeel, Zahid Khan, Afrasiab Khattak, Nabi Bangash, and Farah Aqil Shah are already representing the party in Senate and are due to retire in 2015.
A total of 38 candidates had submitted applications for the Senate polls, including ANP’s former provincial president Begum Naseem Wali Khan, widow of Khan Abdul Wali Khan, but she was refused a party ticket for reasons that haven’t been disclosed.
Predictably, the allocation of tickets preserved the age-old tradition of political horse-trading. Azam Khan Hoti, who was awarded a Senate ticket, is the brother-in-law of ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan and father of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s chief minister. Ilyas Bilour, who was given a ticket as a technocrat, is the brother of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour and Federal Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 9th, 2012.
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