Senate elections in KP: JUI’s Attaur Rahman, PTI’s Zeeshan Khanzada got a scare before winning

PESHAWAR: Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami-Fazl (JUI-F) is discreetly trying to find out whether any of its 15 lawmakers or the two votes promised to its candidate Maulana Attaur Rahman by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) were actually delivered as its nominee got a scare before finally getting elected as member of the Senate from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Maulana Attaur Rahman, the younger brother of JUI-F and Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) head Maulana Fazlur Rahman, was the joint candidate of the opposition parties, including Jamaat-e-Islami. His party has 15 MPAs and the number of votes secured by him in the Senate polls were also 15.

However, the JUI-F provincial spokesman Abdul Jalil Jan said they were making inquiries if all the 15 party MPAs voted for him. “We don’t suspect anyone. We also don’t suspect the PPP, which had committed that two of its MPAs would vote for Maulana Attaur Rahman. But in that case our candidate should have obtained 17 votes in the first round of counting and easily got elected,” he argued.

Maulana Attaur Rahman had to wait until the final round of counting to win a seat in the Senate. His position improved as the second and third choice votes of the PDM components were counted. Otherwise, he was under threat of losing to Taj Mohammad Afridi, the wealthy candidate of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) backed by its ally, PTI. Also in the hunt was another Afridi, the PML-N candidate Abbas Afridi, a former federal minister who eventually polled 11 votes and lost.

PTI’s Zeeshan Khanzada, a former senator and son of veteran PPP leader Khanzada Khan, too faced a scare as he got 14 votes only. It seems some in his pool of voters slipped away and made his win difficult. Sources close to him said some people did their best to make him lose but Allah saved him. He was the last to be elected on the general seats.

Another PTI candidate Faisal Saleem polled 17 votes, which was less than the party’s top three contenders for general seats – Shibli Faraz, Liaqat Tarakai and Mohsin Aziz -, all former Senators.

In the case of Maulana Attaur Rahman, there had been a growing perception that all 15 JUI-F MPAs may not vote for him as the party had recently suffered a split due to expulsion of the party’s senior leaders Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani, Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan and Maulana Shujaul Mulk. Also, the presence of ultra-rich candidates fielded by both PTI and PDM component parties could have tempted them to sell their votes.

Other factors that were cited included the fact that he had just served a six-year term as Senator and belonged to Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s family, which has dominated the JUI-F since its inception.

These perhaps are the reasons that the JUI-F leadership would be probing whether any of its own MPAs didn’t vote for Maulana Attaur Rahman. But that could only hold true if it is established that the two votes promised by the PPP were actually delivered to Maulana Attaur Rahman. The second factor looks more plausible but the facts may remain hidden even if a probe is undertaken and completed.