ISLAMABAD, March 10: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) gained two new Senate seats on Friday when five senators were elected to complete the election of 50 to replace as many retiring members of the upper house.
As expected, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) won the only general Senate seat at stake from the Islamabad capital territory.
But parliamentary sources said three of the four newly elected Fata senators were pro-MMA compared to only one pro-MMA senator from the area who was due to retire on Saturday. The fourth new Fata senator is pro-government.
All candidates for Fata seats contested as independents because political parties were not allowed in the area.
For Fata seats, Hafiz Rashid Ahmed, Maulana Abdul Rashid and Maulana Mohammad Saleh Shah secured six votes each and were declared successful out of eleven polled votes, while Abdul Razzaq seen as a pro-government figure won the seat in a ballot held after a tie.
The Senate has gained its full strength of 100 members in the wake of Friday’s elections.
Tariq Azeem Khan of the ruling party secured 180 votes in the National Assembly and was declared successful, while his opponent B. A. Malik of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) received 122 votes. Leader of the House in the Senate Waseem Sajjad has already been elected unopposed on a technocrat’s seat from Islamabad.
Of the 341 members in the National Assembly, only 319 turned up to elect one senator from Islamabad. Seventeen votes were declared invalid by the presiding officer.
The ruling coalition has bagged a total of 27 seats while the opposition has managed to retain 23, out of 50 seats, which had fallen vacant after the draw.
According to the results, the ruling PML succeeded in becoming the single largest bloc in the upper house after netting 21 seats — the highest number in the Senate elections. The MMA obtained 13 seats while the PPP managed to get five seats, out of the seven lost in the draw.
