LAHORE, Feb 12: The PML-N as well as the PPP on Sunday announced their candidates for Senate polls from Punjab.
PML-N’s candidates are: Sardar Zulfiqar Khosa, M Hamza, Rafiq Rajwana and Zafar Dhandala for four general seats, Ishaq Dar, Kamran Michael and Nuzhat Amir Sadiq for technocrats, minorities and seats reserved for women, respectively. The party, as per its strength in the provincial assembly, could get elected a maximum of seven senators.
The PPP can get elected two senators on general seats and one each on technocrats and seats reserved for women. It has fielded Aitzaz Ahsan, Babar Awan, Aslam Gill and Khalid Qureshi.
Either Aitzaz or Babar will have to be nominated for technocrats’ seat to make way for Aslam Gill on general seat. A final decision in this respect is yet to be taken by the party as Feb 14 (Tuesday) is the last date for filing candidatures with the Election Commission.
The PML-N is negotiating with the Unification Bloc, a splinter group of the PML-Q in the Punjab Assembly supporting the PML-N government for the last four years, for getting elected another senator on the basis of the bloc’s strength (47 as claimed by its leaders).
Some members of the bloc want to field their own candidate as MPA Mian Ijaz Shafi from Rahim Yar Khan had also been interviewed by the PML-N panel the other day.
In the previous Senate polls held in 2009, the PML-N had preferred its middle class cadre on the elite class. Thus, Raja Zafarul Haq, Mushahidullah Khan, Zafar Ali Shah and Pervaiz Rashid made it to the upper house of Parliament.
But this time the criterion seems to have changed as most of those selected for the general seats belong to feudal or affluent families, as one of the interviewer confided to Dawn that under immense pressure from various families the panel recommended 25 people to party chief Nawaz Sharif for taking a final decision.
Mr Khosa, chieftain of Khosa tribe from Dera Ghazi Khan, is a former governor and is presently serving as Punjab chief minister’s senior adviser. With one son as a minister in the Shahbaz government and another son former district nazim, he and his tribe has always been playing an important role in local politics.
A practicing lawyer, who resigned as sessions judge to join the realm of politics, Malik Rafiq Rajwana was elected senator in 1998 against the Punjab seat vacated by Justice (retired) Muhammad Rafiq Tarar when the latter was elected as the President of Pakistan.
He had been denied ticket in the 2008 general election as, what Mushahidullah Khan said, Makhdoom Javed Hashmi wanted to contest from the constituency. So, to compensate him, he was considered for the Senate seat, he added.
Mr Dhandala belongs to an influential family of Bhakkar. As his political rivals, the Niwanis, have been accepted in the party folds, the leadership thought it appropriate to accommodate him in the Senate.
Mr Hamza, a former PML-N MNA and octogenarian politician from Toba Tek Singh, is the only nominee in the list that may be considered as representing the middle class.
Among the PPP nominees, there is also one candidate, Aslam Gill, who represents the middle class.