PPP yet to decide candidate for Senate chairman

Karachi
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) hasn’t decided on a name to nominate for the office of Senate chairman yet and it is talking to all political parties, said Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon on Friday.
He said the PPP still had the highest number of senators, 27, in the upper house of the parliament and would do its best to get one of the party’s senators elected as the chairman.
However, he said, the
PPP would talk to every political party having a representation in the Senate to request them to cast a vote in their favour.
Responding to a question, the information minister said the senate elections in Sindh on Thursday went without any incident of horse-trading and the PPP and MQM sweeped the Senate seats on the bases of their strengths in the provincial assembly.
He said the PPP candidates from Sindh had been able to secure seven more votes than expected, since besides MPAs of National Peoples Party, lawmakers from other opposition parties too had voted for them since they did not have a candidate from their own party.
He said the losing candidate of opposition party Pakistan Muslim League-Functional received 13 votes from members of the Sindh Assembly even though the party had only 10 MPAs. He said three other opposition MPAs of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz also voted for the PML-F candidate.
Answering another question about the likely inclusion of Muttahida Quami Movement in the Sindh government as a coalition partner, he said the PPP had given the task of negotiations to Senator Rehman Malik and they were taking place in a cordial atmosphere.
The information minister used the occasion to completely deny media report that the president of party’s Karachi division, Qadir Patel, had sought asylum in a foreign country on account of the criminal cases registered against him.
He said that Patel was an honourable member and leader of the PPP who had no valid reason to seek political asylum.