The power of money

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,” says Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The vacillating prince can’t bring himself to exact revenge on the man who put his father to death and usurped his crown. Hamlet blames his indecisiveness on his troubling conscience.

On the contrary, the conscience of our lawmakers made them bold enough to cross the floor and vote for candidates from other parties in the recent Senate elections. For some, their conscience is a procrastinator; for others, it makes for intrepidity.

But what was believed to be the voice of conscience in the eyes of those brave legislators was, in fact, lust for money in the eyes of the heads of their parties who saw their mandate stolen. If these parties are to be taken at their word, money talked – and that too loudly – in the elections to the Upper House. In Sindh, the PPP, given its strength in the provincial assembly, should have won not more than 10 seats. But it managed to bag 12 seats. The party drew upon the strength of a divided MQM, which saw only one of its nominees return as senator.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well, the PPP won two seats. In view of the number of its lawmakers in the province, it should have gone empty handed. The PTI was the loser. However, the PTI – the nation’s self-styled symbol of change and cleaner politics – made some amends in Punjab by snatching one seat from the PML-N. In Balochistan, independent candidates had a field day and the PML-N was the prime loser.

Not surprisingly, the heads of most political parties have cried foul over the election results. The PPP is the only party which, for obvious reasons, has not put the results under question. PPP Co-Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto claimed that his party didn’t bribe anyone to win the Senate polls and instead focused on persuading lawmakers from other parties to vote for its candidates. His father, Asif Ali Zardari, is a dab hand at making a sales pitch – a skill that his counterparts are remarkably short on.

Be that as it may, politics is a funny business and the Senate elections could hardly have been an exception to the rule. The alleged sale and purchase of votes in these elections isn’t a one-shot affair. Similar charges were traded in 2015 as well. Elections, from those conducted at the local level to those held in the Upper House, are essentially a pecuniary affair.

The 14th Amendment, enacted in 1997 during the second term of Nawaz Sharif, sought to curb floor-crossing or horse trading by inserting Article 63A into the constitution. The new article declared that a lawmaker would be deemed to have defected and liable to be unseated from a political party if he/she committed a breach of party discipline, voted against any direction issued by the party; and abstained from voting against party policy on any bill.

The 18th Amendment, which was enacted in 2010, watered down the Article 63A by declaring that a member would be deemed to have defected in only two cases: first, if he/she quit his party and joined another; and second, if he/she voted against the direction of his party in relation to the election of the prime minister or the chief minister, a vote of confidence or no confidence, and a money bill or a constitutional amendment bill.

It is obvious that the 18th Amendment does not apply to the Senate elections. Therefore, while electing a senator, a member of the National Assembly or that of a provincial assembly may vote contrary to the party’s policy without making himself liable to be proceeded against for defection. Besides, Article 226 of the constitution stipulates that the elections for the Upper House must be conducted through a secret ballot. This will make it difficult to ascertain who voted for whom.

In order to curb horse trading, quite a few proposals have been put forward. One of these proposals is to change the method of conducting elections. In 2015, distraught political parties sought to amend articles 63A and 226 by providing that the condition of a secret ballot would not apply to the Senate elections. This would make it evident who voted for whom. It would also mean that a legislator who votes against his/her party direction while electing a senator would lose his/her seat.

The proposed 22nd Amendment to the constitution was initiated by the ruling PML-N and supported by the PTI amid stories doing the rounds that horse trading was rampant in the run-up to the upper chamber polls. The fact that similar stories are doing the rounds at present shows that cleaner politics remains a distant dream. The package was opposed by the PPP, among others. At the end, the proposed amendment did not see the light of day and the PPP made some strategic gains in the 2015 Senate elections.

Yes, there is a strong case for electing senators through an open ballot. The problem, however, is that this requires an amendment to the constitution, which is only possible if all the major parties support the proposal.

The second proposal is to make elections to the Upper House direct. In most countries with a bicameral legislature, the upper chamber is elected indirectly – as in Pakistan and India. The US is one of the few democracies where members of the upper house of the legislature are popularly elected. In the case of Pakistan, making the Senate a directly-elected chamber entails at least two problems.

The first problem is that the constitution will have to be amended, which will require an agreement among the major political parties. The second problem is that a popularly-elected Senate can’t have fewer powers than the National Assembly, which is also directly elected. In the US, for instance, the Senate is as powerful as the House of Representatives. In fact, the US Senate has powers which the House does not have. For example, all top-level appointments made by the president are ratified by the Senate, which has the competence to turn those appointments down.

In Pakistan, the National Assembly is much more powerful than the Senate. A money bill, which arguably represents the most important legislation undertaken by parliament, can originate only in the National Assembly and must also be approved by it with or without amendments. The Senate can only discuss the money bill and recommend changes to it. These changes, however, are not binding upon the assembly.

The only reason that the National Assembly is more powerful than the Senate is that it is popularly elected. In case the Senate is elected directly, it should also share the competence to approve the annual budget with the National Assembly. Are our political parties ready to give that authority to the Senate?

Another proposal is to reserve for each political party the number of seats in the Senate that is proportionate to its strength in the national and provincial assemblies. As a result, no party will gain or lose when the Senate is reconstituted every three years. The problem with this proposal, apart from amending the constitution, is that the Senate will become a nominated rather than an elected chamber, which may lower its prestige.

The use of corrupt practices in elections is essentially a cultural issue. The power of money is welcome whenever it works to our advantage. Thus Imran is hot under the collar on the defection of some PTI legislators in KP during the Senate elections. However, he has simply winked at the election of a candidate of his party as senator from Punjab.

The writer is a freelance contributor.

Email: hussainhzaidi@gmail.com