On Thursday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) rescheduled the Senate elections it had set for March 3 to March 5 to allow its staff more time to scrutinize eligibility of the contestants, already decided by the political parties. It seems some quarters are keen that the ECP follow ‘rule of law’ in conducting the elections.

The rescheduling came on the heels of a Lahore High Court orders to the ECP to provide the Returning Officers for the Senate election such details about the contestants as their bank loans and tax payments and to the federal government to delete ‘obsolete columns’ from the existing nomination paper.

Otherwise, the process to indirectly elect 52 new Senators - to replace the same number retired from the 104-member upper house of the parliament every three years - has been progressing “as usual” so far.

In the Westminster-model democracies, which Pakistan adopted under the 1973 Constitution, the upper house is meant to keep a check on the directly elected lower house, the 342-member National Assembly, with senior and saner politicians as its members.

Theoretically, the equal representation of the federating units in the Senate - 22 each – is designed to guard against the domination of larger unit over the smaller ones. Still, greater a party’s presence in the provincial assemblies, greater will be its control over the parliament as a whole. And therein lays the real contest – and so the choice of the contestants in Pakistan’s hierarchical political tradition is reduced to whims and wishes of the party chief.

Except for the new entrant PTI, all parliamentary parties have announced their Senate candidates, relative to their strength in the provincial and federal legislatures.

For whatever reasons, Imran Khan is sitting on the list of PTI candidates – maybe for last minute changes if a more ‘electable’ candidate emerges.

PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has stamped the party’s final list. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has similarly done so for the PML-N which is set to dethrone the PPP majority in the Senate.

Though every party went through the motions of creating a parliamentary board to select its candidates from the many aspirants, the fact remained that the choice of the top boss prevailed.

“More often than not, the selection process was just a formality, an attempt to appear democratic to the nation,” said a loser.

In fact two PML-N nominees, the party chairman Raja Zafarul Haq, and the federal minister for information Pervaiz Rashid were part of the board that selected them.

Both would only be regaining their Senate seats from which have to retire on March 11.

Some Senate aspirants, dumped in the run-up, feel “intra-party elections can be a good option to choose candidates from among genuine party workers”. A senior PML-N office bearer, commenting off the record, said: “One can only hope for good.”

Disappointed PML-N candidates considered it “a glaring violation” that despite enjoying absolute majority both in the National and Punjab assemblies; the party leadership thought it fit field candidates for the Senate outside their home province. They argue that a Senator representing a province other than his own is like denying the province its vote.

“Otherwise,” said one of them, “a citizen wanting to transfer his/her vote to any place in the country can do so simply by applying to the election commission.”

This had reference to reports that the PML-N would pitch its general secretary Zafar Iqbal Jhagra, a resident of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Dr Raheela Magsi, a former district Nazim Tando Aallah Yar, Sindh, for the two sure-win Senate seats of Islamabad.

Similarly, PML-N’s Karachi-based information secretary, Mushahidullah Khan, and secretary general Sindh chapter, Nihal Hashmi, will be representing Punjab in the upper house.

Former PPP interior minister Rehman Malik has his roots in district Sialkot, Punjab, will retain his Senate seat on the strength of his party in the Sindh Assembly. And just 12 MNAs from the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas will be electing four Senators. Money is said to have decided elections in the tribal territory, not any democratic norms.

A senior ECP official talking to Dawn on the condition of anonymity agreed that political parties “better follow what they preach - democracy”. They can gain majorities by transferring votes but not people’s trust.

“How the voters of Islamabad would feel when outsiders represent them in the Senate?” the official asked, loudly thinking that the ECP may intervene to discourage such practices.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2015

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