Peculiar polling

The Senate chairman and deputy chair election was always going to be a bit of a thriller but Friday gave us a set of very unusual events. In the first place we had the extraordinary scenes of two opposition senators discovering ‘spy cameras’ of various kinds from the polling booth that had been set up for senators to cast their ballots. The PDM claimed the cameras were intended to identify PTI members who may have chosen to vote against party lines. This whole episode brought a host of memes and different jokes, which flooded social media. But it added nothing to the politics of Pakistan or to progress in any positive direction at a time when the country stands deeply divided.

The victory for Sadiq Sanjrani who gained 48 votes compared to 42 by Yousuf Raza Gilani of the PDM, with 7 votes discarded as invalid, was not really a surprise. The position taken by the PDM, that the votes had been mistakenly stamped by PDM senators, was overtaken by the 54 votes received by the deputy chairman for the PTI and its allies, Mirza Muhammad Afridi. The whole scenario essentially opens up the issue of the manner in which Pakistan's political system is run and how it is managed. While there may be a point in the PDM's argument of unfair reading and writing of rules for balloting, it has been left much weakened by the election of the deputy chairman. In all this, there is a dire need for parties to exercise greater care in selecting senators and deciding how to do this. When people with money and the ability to win influence through wealth are chosen over those who have served their fields and their party loyally then there will always be trouble and a great deal of acrimony. We saw this acrimony on Friday, with both sides exchanging barbs and sharp words, even though many of those who occupy the Upper House are firm friends outside the chamber.

The government will need to think seriously about electoral reform, hopefully in a dialogue with the opposition. Such matters cannot be managed in isolation. It is also essential that in order to carry forward governance and the process of parliamentary politics both sides learn to talk, rather than hurl accusations at each other. As for the PDM, it will need to figure out its next steps carefully. Even if it does contest the result for Yousaf Raza Gilani, the fact is that something is amiss in its own house. The question on everyone's mind now is: what next for the PDM? Does it stick to the PML-N narrative? Will the narrative of 'neutrality' be proven right at some point? Will we see an attempt to derail the Punjab government? Or will that attempt too crash the way we saw happen in the Senate? On a broader level, Pakistan needs an end to such a trade of accusations and counter-accusations so that political parties can work together to find a way out of the trauma the country's people are going through.