ISLAMABAD: The parliamentary group leaders will determine the fate of the proposed 22nd Amendment today (Friday) that will stall horse-trading in the March 5 Senate election. Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has convened a meeting of parliamentary leaders today soon after the Friday prayers at the PM House to devise a strategy for eliminating the unparliamentarily practice of horse-trading. This is for the first time that the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) leader Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and PTI chief Imran Khan are on the same page for a political cause, dealing with political morality. The government will place the draft of the 22nd Amendment that has been choreographed by a special committee before the leaders, constituted by the prime minister in the federal cabinet special meeting of Monday last. The brief draft of the amendment would ensure stalling of horse-trading in the polls by converting the process of elections from secret to open balloting. Members of the national and provincial assemblies defying the whip of their respective party and casting vote to a non-party candidate will lose membership of the assembly. Highly-placed sources told The News that in case the group leaders develop a consensus, a session of the National Assembly could be summoned immediately much before the schedule of March 4 announced earlier. All the chief ministers have also been invited to attend the meeting. Former president Asif Zardari has also been invited, but it is unlikely that he would attend the meeting that will commence at 2:30pm today. It is widely understood that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its close allies are opposing the idea for undertaking any change in the procedure of voting in the ensuing polls for 52 seats of the Senate under the pretext that it could make the polls, for which a schedule had already been announced, disputed. Political observers are of the view that the hotly contested election for the Senate berth has generated a fair amount of interest among major political parties due to its decisive impact on the election for the chairman and deputy chairman of the Senate.
