KARACHI: All efforts by the Pakistan Peoples Party to get elected its five candidates unopposed on as many general seats have so far yielded no result as the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Functional refused to withdraw its lone candidate from the contest, it emerged on Monday.

While four candidates — two each of the PPP and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement — have been elected unopposed on two seats each reserved for women and technocrats, eight candidates are in the run for seven general seats of the senate in Sindh.

Also read: PPP, Muttahida candidates elected unopposed to four reserved senate seats from Sindh

Abdul Latif Ansari, Abdul Rahman Malik, Saleem Mandviwalla, Islamuddin Shaikh and Engineer Gayanchand are the five PPP candidates and Khushbakht Shujaat and Mian Muhammad Ateeq are the two MQM candidates. Imamuddin Shauqeen is contesting the March 5 election on a PML-F ticket.

In the 167-member house, the PPP has 91 MPAs, MQM 51, PML-F 11, PML-Nawaz eight, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf four and the National Peoples Party two.

According to the senate voting formula, 20.88 votes are needed to win a general seat.

Based on their parliamentary strength, the PPP and the MQM can easily win four and two general seats, respectively.

And if the two parties contest the election as per their seat-adjustment agreement, the PPP still needs 4.16 votes more to win its fifth seat since the combined votes of the two parties are 142. They need 146.16 votes to win all the seven seats.

However, if all opposition parties, excluding the PTI, join hands, the PML-F candidate would get 21 votes and can easily win the seat.

The provincial president of the PML-F, Pir Sadruddin Shah, was quite confident of having more than the required votes to get his party candidate elected easily.

He was in touch with all opposition groups and besides 11 MPAs of his party, the PML-N as well as NPP leadership are said to have made commitments to back his party’s candidate.According to sources, Pir Sadruddin is also trying to muster support of the PTI lawmakers for his party candidate.

However, PTI MPA Syed Hafeezuddin told Dawn that so far no instructions had been received from the party high command about taking part in the senate elections in Sindh. “However, it is quite clear that our all MPAS will abide by party discipline,” he added.

Four PTI lawmakers —Hafeezuddin, Samar Ali Khan, Khurram Sher Zaman and Dr Seema Zia — tendered their resignation last year after their party decided not to sit in the assemblies in protest over alleged rigging in the May 2013 general elections.

Analysts believe that it would be a shock for the PPP if the PML-F candidate defeats a PPP man.

On Saturday, PPP’s Sassui Palejo and Farooq H. Naek and the MQM’s Barrister Mohammad Ali Saif and Nighat Mirza Hina were elected unopposed on two senate seats each reserved for women and technocrats. The candidates against them had withdrawn their nomination papers as part of a seat-adjustment agreement between the PPP and the MQM.

Published in Dawn March 3rd , 2015

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