Hasnain and Shahjahan Baloch.
The PTI chairman Imran Khan, Mussarat Zaib, Nasir Khattak and Aisha Gulalai were also absent from the session.
The Tuesday’s decisive parliamentary victory of embattled PML-N came as a surprise for many political pundits and opposition leaders who were expecting major defections in the ruling party during the vote on PPP’s sponsored bill.
The ruling party defeated the bill with 163 votes while opposition could gather only 98 votes in favour of the draft legislation seeking to restrict disqualified prime minister Nawaz Sharif from heading the PML-N. Although over 22 PML-N members and 30 coalition members still remained absent during the voting and one voted against the party, the comfortable margin of party’s victory put to rest the rumours that ruling party is facing a large scale revolt from within.
Even the opposition members could not hide their shock on the floor of House after seeing large number of PML-N members in the National Assembly. In their speeches Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Pakistan People’s Party leaders Khursheed Shah and Azra Fazal Pechuho mentioned the heavy presence of ruling party members to vote on the bill while lamenting their absence in the House during other important legislations.
Several opposition figures and TV anchors had predicted up to 70 defections in PML-N before the Tuesday voting. Even the key leaders of PML-N had publically acknowledged efforts to create a forward block in the party during last few weeks. Federal Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique and provincial minister Rana Sanaullah had informed the media on record that ruling party members are receiving calls from unknown number asking them to refrain from voting in favour of the party in the Parliament.
However the strong show on Tuesday put to rest rumours of mass exodus from the ruling party, which is facing difficulties on several front after disqualification of its leader Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister in July this year. The party managed to get 165 members out of its 188 to attend the session although 159 attend the actual voting. Only 22 party members did not attend the session including Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif.
Although PML-N had managed to avert a leadership crisis after successfully amending a Musharraf-era law barring a disqualified person from holding top party post, its difficulties are far from over. Sharif family and several other top leaders of the party are facing probes by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in multiple corruption cases amidst reports of party’s serious differences with establishment and its confrontation with superior judiciary.
To further complicate things on October 23, the opposition-controlled Senate passed the Elections (Amendment) Bill 2017 with a majority vote, re-barring disqualified persons from taking part in political activities.
“Tuesday’s vote has proven that opponents of N League have no chance in this Assembly to harm Nawaz Sharif through any parliamentary move or defections,” said senior journalist and political analysts Suhail Warraich.
“No One was expecting that PML-N will get this much support in the Parliament today as efforts were going for a long time to cause defections in the party,” he said.
Warraich said about 20 members of the party remained absent from voting process. “As a matter of routine we see 8 to 10 members absent from parliamentary voting due to overseas visits etc.
The real number of absentees is about 10 which is not a big number and importantly no one came out in public against the party in the Parliament apart from Zafarullah Jamali which is significant,” Warraich said.He added that the only hope left for the opponents of Nawaz is to cause defection in the party after the Assembly is dissolved.