ISLAMABAD: Certain irregularities that emerged in Thursday’s Senate election – which were carried out in the name of enforcing party discipline – have caused a furore among political circles.

Current and former parliamentarians that Dawn spoke to admitted that even though such tactics were not new to Pakistani politics, they were more suited to grass-root politics and did not behove the high-profile of the Senate polls.

The discovery that PTI MPAs were taking ballot papers outside the polling area incensed opposition lawmakers in the assembly. ANP’s Zahid Khan, who was among the leading critics of the ruling party, told Dawn: “I’ve never heard of this happening in the past.”

He said that he was elected to the Senate in 2009 for the first time. “If this has happened in the past, it may have been on an individual basis, but now the ruling party of a province is doing this in an organised fashion, which is unacceptable.”

Sheikh Waqqas Akram, former education minister and an ex-MNA from Jhang, told Dawn that such methods of ensuring party discipline have been used in the past as well. “But back then, it was only done to keep a check on a few legislators, whose loyalties were in doubt. It has never been part of organised party policy before.”

Another ex-parliamentarian, speaking off the record, said that this practice was more suited to councillor elections and it did not become the level of the upper house that such tactics should be employed to keep an eye on who-was-voting-for-whom.

Senior journalist Nusrat Javeed, who has covered the National Assembly for several years, told Dawn in past elections, it was easier to get away with tricks such as this to enforce party discipline. “In the past, the ballot boxes used to be in private cabins, now they are in plain view, making it harder to pocket one’s ballot paper as was previously possible,” he said.

He also said that increased media coverage and scrutiny of the elections had made the process relatively cleaner. “Compared to all Senate elections since 1985, I would say this is among one of the cleanest elections, the confusion notwithstanding.”

He said that in the past, legislators whose loyalties were suspect would be asked to take photos of their ballot papers before casting them as proof that they had voted along party lines. However, this practice was discontinued when the Election Commission banned voters from taking mobile phones into voting booths.

“Accusations of buying and selling votes, historically, have been levelled most frequently in the KP and Balochistan assemblies. Punjab and Sindh are relatively clean when it comes to such occurrences and we saw similar trends emerging this time around as well,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2015

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