After the election

Elections to the Senate should, in theory, be an entirely predictable affair where the results are known in advance. Senate seats are won on the basis of votes gathered in the provincial assemblies and the National Assembly and one would assume that party members vote for their own candidates. But several wrinkles were introduced in the run-up to this past Saturday’s elections which have cast some doubt on which party will be able to claim control of the Senate and the positions of chairperson and deputy chair. The Supreme Court decision which nullified all decisions Nawaz Sharif took as party chief after being disqualified from holding public office means all candidates aligned with the PML-N are now technically independents. They will not be bound by laws on floor-crossing and so could face pressure and inducements to defect. The shake-up in the Balochistan government in January has created another slate of incoming senators, eight in total, who are also independent. Then there have been the usual allegations of horse-trading and the like. These have to be given some credence given the massive discrepancies between the PPP’s strength in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh assemblies and the total number of senators that were elected from the party.

As things stand, the PML-N and its allies control 48 seats in the Senate while the PPP and its allies have 40 seats with the PTI holding 12 seats. These numbers, though, are in flux as both the PML-N and PPP try to win over the crucial independents. Assuming the PTI does not lend its support to either of the major parties – a safe assumption to make given its vociferous opposition to both and a general tendency to act as a disruptive influence in parliament – these independents hold the key to the Senate. Which side they end up joining will be a barometer of the political temperature in the country in the lead up to general elections this summer. The PML-N believes forces are arrayed against it to deny it a return to power. Should any of the independents expected to back the PML-N change sides that would add weight to this belief. Already recriminations from the election are in full swing, with PML-N chief Shahbaz Sharif reportedly grilling his son Shahbaz over the party losing one seat it should have won from Punjab and the PTI promising to find out which of its members in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa voted for the PPP. The danger now is of the political parties becoming so involved in their own parochial concerns that they lose sight of the bigger picture: working together to ensure a smooth transition of power to a caretaker set-up so that political deadlocks in the country can be sorted out by the citizens of Pakistan.