Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: With Senate elections just around the corner, a video of Ali Haider Gillani, son of former prime minister and Senate candidate Yousuf Raza Gillani has surfaced which exposed the PPP leader “buying vote” for upcoming upper house polls. The video shows a PPP leader asking the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) MNA to “sell his vote”. Ali Haider Gillani was also telling the PTI lawmaker how to waste his Senate vote.
The video of Ali Haider Gillani was recorded a week back. There will be a one-to-one contest between Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh and former prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani for a general seat.
Currently, the National Assembly has 341 seats for lawmakers from across the country. The ruling PTI holds 157 seats, PML-N 83, PPP 55, 15 MMA, MQM-P 7, BAP 5, PML-Q 4, BNP 4, GDA 3, AML 1, ANP 1, JWP 1, and four are independent members. There are a total of 78 candidates contesting the 2021 Senate polls from the federal capital and the three provinces. Polling for 37 Senate seats excluding Punjab where senators got elected unopposed will take place on March 3. A total of 37 senators 12 each from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, 11 from Sindh, and two from Islamabad will get elected.
Electoral process
The electoral process is such that all members of the National Assembly will be given two ballot papers one for the general seat and other for the women’s seat. In Sindh, members of the Provincial Assembly will be granted three ballot papers, for the election of general, women and technocrat seats. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan however, members of Provincial Assembly members will be given four ballot papers, where the additional ballot will correspond to a minority seat.
What is the single transferable vote?
The STV was first used in Pakistan in 1973. Under this system, every voter has only one vote, in which he prioritises his choices in a sequence against the names of the candidates. Simply put, the voters rank each candidate they want their vote to go to by writing 1,2 and 3 against the names of each candidate on the ballot paper.
