Senate Elections

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
21

‘Horse-trading to inhibit true democracy’

http://khybermail.com.pk/morecity.htm
PESHAWAR (NNI): The head of Jamiat Ulema Islam (S) and Vice President of MMA, Maulana Samiul Haq has claimed that rampant horse-trading was done during the recent NWFP Senate elections.

He claimed that votes had been bought for one crore each and pointed towards the Federal Minister for Water and Power as being the main culprits behind the scenes.

Maulana Samiul Haq said that if this deplorable trend continued, true democracy would never see the light of day in Pakistan. He also accused those professing to be the supporters of democracy as being the ones hammering the final nail in its coffin.

He said that MMA had fulfilled the majority of its promises to the people and would soon implement the Shariat Law in NWFP. Negotiations with PPP (P) and the PML(N) were still going on and Maulana Fazl-Ur-Rahman would be the Leader of the Opposition in the parliament.

Maulana Samiul Haq said that nine political parties including the PPP(P) and PML(N) had assured the MMA of their support in parliament.

       Turncoats MPs expulsion sought

Khyber Mail Report

PESHAWAR: Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N)Central Leader Arbab Khizer Hayat Khan has strongly condemned "the worst trading carried out in the recent Senate elections.

In a press release issued here on Tuesday, he stated that two MPA’s who succeeded on the PML-N, tickets during the last election cheated their party. “It seems that they have sold themselves by getting huge some of money to vote for others. These turn coats donot deserve to remain in the PML-N and must resign rather all these deserters must be singled out by the party leadership and expelled from the party dishonorably,” he mentioned.

Khizer stressed upon the leaders of all the political parties that the MPA’s who succeeded on their party tickets and did not vote for the party candidates must be expelled from their respective parties. He stated that if cleansing in the parties does not take place know then the horse-trading will continue for ever, he concluded.

22

**
[quote]
....These seems perfectly in line with what these parties representation....**
[/quote]

A little too perfect dont you think?

23

Independents make dent
http://www.dawn.com/2003/text/fea.htm#2

By Mohammed Riaz

Peshawar: The affluent independent candidates who ran for the Senate elections from NWFP have not only made a dent in the political parties, but shattered the confidence of the parties’ leaders.

Three independent senators - Mohammad Azam Khan Swati, a former Mansehra Nazim, Waqar Ahmed, and his father Gulzar Ahmed, a former lieutenant of Benazir Bhutto - bagged the highest votes in the Senate election on Monday. The three worthy senators are known for their riches.

The three candidates have collectively polled 32 out of the valid 121 votes. Three votes were rejected.

Khalilur Rehman, alias ‘Commander’, who polled handsomely in a previous Senate election, has done very well this time again. This time he had managed a ticket of the ruling PML-Q and averted all gossip against him. But his fellow Leaguers are satisfied with him. He bagged nine votes.

The PPP and PML-N have emerged as the biggest losers in this election after the general elections. The PPP nominee, Sardar Ali Khan, polled only one vote out of the total of 10. The PML-N nominee, Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan, also got only one vote out of his party’s five MPAs. But his brother-in-law, Mumtaz Abbasi from Hazara, Dr Saleem Khan from Swabi and Sardar Israrullah Khan from Dera Ismail Khan voted for Mr Mehtab Khan and he won the seat on the basis of these three votes.

Awami National Party’s Asfandyar Wali Khan secured seven out of the 10 votes of his party. Three of the ANP’s members sold out. The PPP-S has 13 MPAs, but its nominee Shujaul Mulk secured 10 votes with three of its legislators slipping out of its grasp.

The ruling alliance, Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, has won seven general seats, two women’s and two technocrat seats. The MMA has secured 11 out of the total of 24 seats. The JUI, leading component of the MMA, has given four MPAs to Azam Swati and he managed seven more out of the other parties’ dissidents.

Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani too had expressed his hatred towards the horse-trading in the elections. One of the candidates offered Rs12 million to an MMA member, but he refused to sell out. That MPA is very poor. He has an old motorbike. But he stood like a towering mountain against the lucrative offer. We know that brokers remained active for the last several days, he told Dawn. Ibrahim Qasmi, Maulana Ismatullah, Qari Mehmood, Sardar Idrees, Maulana Mohammad Idrees, Akhtar Nawaz Khan, Ghaliba Khursheed and Shah Hussain were reportedly directed by the MMA to vote for Mr Azam Khan.

After his success, Mr Azam Khan told reporters that he was thankful to the JUI for its support, but he would not sit with MMA senators as he had nothing to do with the alliance.

Dr Saleem from Swabi told Dawn that all the seven independents are united under one banner, but they had much earlier agreed that they would not collectively cast their votes. Everybody was free to vote according to his conscience.

MPA Zar Gul, PML-Q, remained active the whole day on Monday to coordinate with MPAs who were to vote for the PML-Q nominee. The PPP and ANP drove their candidates in a motorcade from their respective secure locations to the assembly hall.

Chief Minister Durrani led the JUI men from the Frontier House to the assembly hall in the afternoon. They were the last ones who polled their votes.

24

Ahem Malik?

The best democracy money can buy
http://www.dawn.com/2003/text/fea.htm#1
By M. Ziauddin

The way the General Elections were masterminded by Mr Tariq Aziz and Lt-General Zamir Jaffarey in Oct 2002, there could not have been any other result in the Senate elections of Feb 2003 than what was finally achieved by the ruling alliance on Thursday.

The EU Election Observation Mission in its final report on Pakistan’s Oct 2002 elections had said that the process of aggregation of votes made in the offices of the Returning Officers was chaotic and not transparent in many places.

The involvement of public authorities and the misuse of state resources, the EU report said, played a crucial part in tipping the balance in favour of government-sponsored PML-Q candidates.

Those who were elected through this process were the ones who voted to elect 100 senators for the upper house. And the final touches to the ‘Best Democracy Money Can Buy’ was given by the civil-military duo on the concluding day of the election process when 12 MMA MNAs from Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (Fata) elected six PML-Q candidates for the eight Senate positions reserved for Fata . The remaining two went to the MMA.

On the two general seats from Islamabad and one each for women and technocrat/ulema, the PML-Q bagged three, with the fourth (general) going to Prof Ghafoor Ahmed of the MMA. There was no way the professor could have won his Senate seat from Islamabad without a generous helping hand from the PML-Q. And this has given rise to the suspicion that perhaps the MMA traded its six Fata seats for one of Islamabad’s to accommodate one of its very senior members and a veteran parliamentarian from Karachi.

However, when the Fata MNAs did not show up at the NA at the time appointed for election - 10am - the corridors of the parliament building started buzzing with loud whispers of money changing hands. The price tag quoted was Rs10 million for each member. And when finally the Fata members started arriving at about 12 noon seemingly fully satisfied to cast their votes, some of those who were covering the event asked, still in whispers: Who is delivering them? Who is the front man? One veteran hack named a name who owns a restaurant in Islamabad. The man had provided similar services in the past as well to the establishment. But in the absence of any clear-cut evidence, one simply has to accept the version of the ruling coalition that all those who voted today cast their votes in accordance with their Zamir!

When the election schedule was announced sometime last year, the senators were to be elected through the list system provided by each party before the general election. Each party were to be allotted the number of seats in the Senate in accordance with the total seats won in the provincial assemblies.

After some time, the government announced that it was reverting back to the old method of Senate elections except in the case of Fata where the region would be divided into eight constituencies and the senators would be elected by a direct vote. But after a few weeks in the Fata case too it was back to the old method.

The government seemingly resorted to second thoughts and third thoughts perhaps simply to ensure a majority in the Senate for the ruling coalition. This, it seems to have accomplished in a highly dubious manner.

Syed Mushahid Hussain, information minister in the dismissed Nawaz Sharif cabinet has come back to the Senate on the PML-Q ticket. However, on his way back he seems to have lost the credibility that he had built for himself over the years, especially during his solitary confinement after the October 12 military takeover.

He first cashed part of this credibility by joining the Kashmir committee constituted by the military government soon after his release from what some of his detractors had described then as ‘protective custody’ because during this period he was kept first in his own ministerial house and then in his sister’s.