KARACHI: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Wednesday won seven seats of the Senate from the Sindh Assembly, including five general seats, one technocrat and woman seat each, while Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, part of combined opposition in the provincial assembly, bagged two seats each from the Sindh Assembly.
The opposition alliance’s third component — Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), an alliance comprising Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) — suffered upset when its leader Pir Pagaro’s younger brother Sadruddin Shah Rashdi only managed 14 votes and sat with spirits down. He however managed to get recounting done thrice but that could not boost the numbers he had already secured.
The MPAs came to the house to cast their votes in the form of groups. Two disgruntled PTI lawmakers, Shaharyar Shar and Aslam Abro, came to the house along with PPP lawmakers. PTI Karachi President Khurram Sherzaman remained quite active throughout the day. The PTI members also raised slogans and hurled taunts to critcise the PPP in the assembly hall. Better sense prevailed on the government side who sat quietly observing the process.
As soon as the PTI’s defecting MPA Sheharyar Khan Shar cast his vote, he was quickly taken away in the standby car of Irrigation Minister Sohail Anwar Siyal. The other PTI’s defecting MPA, Aslam Abro, announced after casting his vote that he had followed the dictates of his conscience. He hanged around for a little while but slipped away soon afterwards.
Since polling was held on the basis of secret ballot, the Election Commission of Pakistan had prohibited voters to bring their cell phones or cameras to the house.An interesting situation was witnessed when the PTI’s Karim Bux Gabol tried to approach the election booth. As he neared the booth, PTI President Karachi also approached him from behind and that was when PPP’s MPA Shamim Mumtaz thrust forward and removed a cell phone from the pocket of Zaman’s coat. Displaying the recovered cell phone to the ECP officials, MPA Mumtaz told them that Zaman was trying to pass the cell phone to Gabol so he could take picture of the vote he cast. The PPPP Senate candidate on technocrat seat, Farooq Naek, also approached the ECP officials reporting Zaman’s violation of code of conduct by trying to pass the phone to Gabol. Zaman was flustered at the discovery and the ECP officials directed him to move away and cast his vote later in the day. Thereby Zaman was allowed to cast his vote right towards the end of the day after 4:30pm, half an hour before the 5pm deadline.
Gabol had changed his position twice in the last 2-3 days, first recording video statement of casting vote for the PPP candidate along with PTI MPAs Sheharyar Khan Shar and Aslam Abro. On Tuesday, after he was wrestled away by the PTI MPs, he recorded another video accusing the PPP leaders of kidnapping him and declaring that he would vote on the party lines.
MPA Shabbir Ali Sanjrani of the PPP was the first to cast his vote in the Sindh Assembly for the Senate elections Wednesday morning. This was soon followed by other parliamentarians but the pace remained quite slow, till almost noon, as the ruling party members were witnessed being extremely relaxed in realising their constitutional obligation.
Only 65 votes could be cast by quarter to noon, majority of these being those of the ruling PPP party along with the two PTI defectors — Aslam Abro and Sheheryar Shar — and seven other MPAs representing PTI and its allies from GDA and MQM.
MPA Jamal Siddiqui, the spokesman of PTI Karachi talking to news agencies, said the MPAs belonging to opposition were reaching the house in form of groups to avoid any highhandedness on the part of PPPP. “We want this process to be smooth and peaceful and have thus ensured that we are there in groups of five to six MPAs,” he said, mentioning that all the MPAs were in a nearby hotel and can easily reach the assembly.