PTI and allies JI, AJIP finalise panels for Senate polls

PESHAWAR: The joint parliamentary party meeting of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Awami Jamhoori Ittehad Pakistan (AJIP) on Tuesday finalised their panels and voting strategy for the Senate elections being held on Thursday.
All the MPAs from the three parties except four and their candidates for the Senate elections attended the meeting held at the Chief Minister’s House. Chief Minister Pervez Khattak was in the chair.
The members who remained absent from the meeting included the PTI dissident Javed Nasim elected from Peshawar, Qurban Ali Khan from Nowshera and Malik Qasim Khan Khattak and Gul Sahib Khan from Karak. All four are affiliated with the PTI though Malik Qasim was elected as an independent.
Malik Qasim and Gul Sahib Khan, the two MPAs from Karak according to a source were busy in some protests about the natural gas issue in their district and were unable to attend the meeting. They reportedly remained in touch with the party leaders during meeting on telephone. Javed Nasim has been expelled from the party and he wasn’t invited to the meeting. The absence of Qurban Ali Khan, who was leading the 14-member ‘like-minded’ group in the PTI, raised eyebrows amid reports that his differences with the party had increased.
The Provincial Election Commissioner was specially invited to the meeting of the three ruling parties to brief the participants about the Senate polls process and the procedure for casting ballots.
He gave a power-point presentation to the participants. An introduction session was also held for the members of the provincial assembly and the candidates.When reached by telephone, Senior Minister for Health and leader of Awami Jamhoori Ittehad Pakistan (AJIP) Shahram Taraki said it was a routine meeting about the Senate elections. He said that the panels were decided in the meeting so that the MPAs knew the candidate for whom they were required to vote.
PTI’s central senior vice-president Shibli Faraz, who is also a candidate for the Senate, said all the participants of the meeting were in high morale and would vote for the party candidates as instructed by their leadership.
JI MPA Mohammad Ali, who was elected from Upper Dir, was quiet hopeful of winning all the seats on which the three parties have fielded candidates. “The impression being portrayed outside was totally different from the inside. We are all together and the situation is under control,” he remarked. He was hopeful that the PTI MPAs would vote for the JI chief Sirajul Haq just like the JI lawmakers who would vote for the PTI’s Senate candidates in return.
The three parties have fielded four candidates for the general seats. They are Sirajul Haq of Jamaat-i-Islami, AJIP’s Liaqat Khan Tarakai, and PTI’s Shibli Faraz and Mohsin Aziz. The candidates for the reserved seats for technocrats and Ulema, women and minorities include businessman Nauman Wazir, Samina Abid who is the wife of a senior bureaucrat and Brigadier (Retd) John Kenneth Williams, who belongs to the Christian community. All three are affiliated to the PTI.