-Government’s candidates win Senate chairman, deputy slots
-Sanjrani receives 48, Gillani secures 42 while 7 votes rejected
-PML-N Miftah Ismail mocks Bilawal over neutrality remarks
-Punjab CM says Only Imran Khan’s ticket will work
-Ministers reject opposition’s baseless allegations
By Ajmal Khan Yousafzai
ISLAMABAD: PTI candidate Sadiq Sanjrani won another term as the Senate chairman on Friday in a blow to the joint opposition, despite the latter having a majority in the Upper House.
In a second win for the ruling coalition, PTI-backed Senator Mirza Mohammad Afridi was elected deputy chairman, beating opposition candidate Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri of the JUI-F.
The opposition challenged the result of the Senate chairman election after it was announced that seven votes cast in favour of opposition candidate Yousuf Raza Gilani were rejected.
However, presiding officer Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah overruled their objection, saying the seven votes were rejected because they were not stamped correctly. Another vote was rejected because it had been cast in favour of both the candidates.
With a total of eight votes rejected, Gilani received 42 valid votes, while Sanjrani won the election after bagging 48 votes. In total, 98 senators voted in the election. For the deputy chairman election, Sanjrani announced that Afridi had received 54 votes, while Haideri received 44. This indicates seven opposition senators likely voted for the PTI-backed candidate.
Polling began after 3pm, and an officer called out names of senators in alphabetical order who collected ballot papers from officials and cast their votes at the polling booth. JUI-F’s Haideri was the first senator to be called to make his choice.
Shah, who cast the last vote, announced around 4:40 that all 98 senators present in the house had cast their votes after which the counting began at 5pm.
After being declared the winner, Sanjrani took the oath of his office and later presided over the election for the Senate deputy chairman.
Former prime minister Gilani (PPP) and Haideri (JUI-F) were fielded by the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement as its joint candidates for the posts of chairman and deputy chairman, respectively.
The government had alre¬a¬dy announced that Sanjrani will be its candidate for the office for another term. On Thursday, Prime Minister Imran Khan nominated Senator Afridi — a billionaire from erstwhile Fata — for the post of deputy chairman.
Shah, who earlier administered the oath to all 48 newly elected members of the Upper House, read out the names of the candidates contesting for the positions as well as the senators sponsoring them.
He also directed that a body be formed comprising equal number of senators from the government and the opposition to investigate the matter of “hidden” cameras found earlier in the session.
“Recovered items like cameras and otherwise, will be secured and sealed till the final disposal of the matter,” he said.
The presiding officer further said a new polling booth had been established and asked representatives from both sides to inspect them.
The controversy: While announcing the results, presiding officer Shah said seven votes cast in favour of Gilani were rejected because the stamp on these ballot papers was affixed on Gilani’s name instead of “against his name”.
Gilani’s polling agent Farook H. Naek protested the presiding officer’s ruling, arguing that the instructions only stated that the stamp had to be placed inside the box of the preferred candidate, and did not specify on “which area of the box” the stamp had to be affixed.
On the other hand, PTI’s Mohsin Aziz, the polling agent for Sanjrani, while reading out from a paper said the instructions “very clearly” stated that the vote had to be stamped in the box in front of the preferred candidate’s name, and not on top of the candidate’s name. Shah then stated that in his view, the instructions stated that the stamp had to be placed in front of the candidate’s name. He subsequently rejected the seven votes in question and declared Sanjrani the winner.
As opposition members protested, the presiding officer asked them to “go and appeal [the ruling] in the election tribunal” if they didn’t agree with it.
The PPP rejected the results of the Senate chairman election, with Senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar saying the party could either challenge the result in court or bring a no-confidence motion against Sanjrani. He said the PPP leadership will announce the final route it will take.
Taking a jibe at the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after the victory of government-backed candidates in Senate elections on Friday, Chief Minister Punjab Usman Buzdar said that only Imran Khan’s ticket would work.
Taking to Twitter to congratulate Sadiq Sanjrani and Mirza Afridi over their victory on chairman and deputy chairman Senate slots, Usman Buzdar said: “Only Imran Khan’s ticket will work!!”
The chief minister Punjab said that those who tried to make every effort to win the Senate elections through putting lawmakers for auctioning were once again defeated.
