THE Senate elections have left in their wake outrage, mudslinging and stories about betrayal and backstabbing. But in the midst of the allegations and collective mourning about corruption, horse-trading and intervention by undemocratic players, a few voices are focusing on the larger issue of the manner in which the elections — to the Senate as well as the chairman’s post — are conducted.

So, while there were ample analyses about PML-N dissenters and what Asif Ali Zardari may or may not have done with or without Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s knowledge, there were a few who asked why the Senate elections are never short of their fair share of controversies (about vote buying and surprising election of candidates); why there should be any expectations from senators whose own election to the upper house is filled with questions; and why a secret ballot is needed to begin with.

Indeed, the opposition parties are now claiming that they will move to change the secret ballot into an open vote to avoid a repeat of last week when a no-confidence move was accepted after 64 senators stood up in the Senate in its support, but only 50 votes were counted once the ballot had taken place.

This demand to get rid of the secret ballot was one the PTI was in favour of when the parties were finalising the Election Act 2017 but failed to push through as it lacked support.

The debate on the secret ballot that kicked off last week is not a simple one.

This time around, if the opposition parties are serious enough about the change, it would be interesting to see if the PTI will support the idea or take another U-turn, considering how it was helped by the secrecy of the ballot last week.

But apart from the ruling party, some observers have also spoken in favour of the secret ballot as it allows individual parliamentarians the exercise of free choice (regardless of the motivations behind it); otherwise they would have no choice but to follow the party line. And while party discipline is not to be scoffed at, there is also the issue of how democratically the party line is formulated.

In other words, the debate that kicked off last week is not a simple one. It ties in with the larger issue of political parties which are not just institutionally weak, but wary of intervention from the outside. Both these factors have partly led to the centralised (and at times authoritarian) decision-making process.

Having experienced time and again the departure of some in their rank and file for greener pastures (whoever is ruling on Constitution Avenue), party leaderships in the PPP and PML-N have evolved into small kitchen cabinets (which sometimes are literally the family running the party with little outside consultation). The PTI is not much different, even though it has never experienced enforced splintering the way the older parties have.

For example, a PML-N wallah once explained that decisions were usually made by Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif and Ishaq Dar. If these three could not agree on a matter, it would go to the second tier, which would include senior leaders such as Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Khawaja Asif and others. If they too were unable to find the answer, it would go to the third tier and then the entire party! But few issues were so unimportant that they trickled down so far.

The PPP does not function all too differently, which is why so many in Islamabad are discussing the ‘story’ that a message was sent to the incarcerated Asif Ali Zardari, who then managed to tell a few senators to vote a certain way in the Aug 1 election.

It is this lack of trust between senior leaders and their rank and file which impels parties to even view parliament as a forum where individuals have to be ‘controlled’. It is partly this impulse which leads to moves such as turning a secret ballot into an open vote. A similar impulse is also behind those who suggest that elections to the Senate (which again are so hard to ‘control’) should be through a ‘list system’ rather than voting, which allows parliamentarians to exercise their ‘choice’ and deprive the parties of their ‘rightful share’.

The problem here is of not just ‘wayward’ legislators who may allegedly sell their vote or help someone (Chaudhry Sarwar making it to the Senate is a case in point), but also the fear that they are being blackmailed or pressured by the establishment to vote against their party line.

In fact, it is this fear which led to the anti-defection clause — which makes it mandatory for a parliamentarian to vote with the party in an election/ confidence bill/ no-confidence move, a money bill, or stop him or her from changing loyalties.

But while all this does help impose party discipline, it does not strengthen democratic decision-making within parties. And the latter is no less important. It needs to be asked if Sadiq Sanjrani would have been elected chairman Senate in the first place had the PPP decided the matter through a vote within the party, or if the PTI had submitted its resignations en masse if its parliamentarians were allowed to make the decision through a secret ballot.

In other words, the election to the Senate as well as for its chairman needs to be made transparent — but this will not address the larger problem of centralised political parties that do not make decisions which are supported by the majority of their membership. Despite what we think happened in the Senate election, there is weight to the argument that senators should be allowed to have a say in who is best suited to be chairman.

This is also important because there is a need to consider what will help democracy in the long run — will it be more centralised decision-making within political parties, or will more democratic parties help prevent outside intervention and tip the civil-military balance? Perhaps this may be a more suitable question to focus on than the immediate one of ensuring that elections in the Senate spring no surprises.

The writer is a journalist.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2019