Hectic lobbying leads to govt’s success in Senate

ISLAMABAD: During voting on various clauses of the Elections Bill 2017 and proposed amendments, hectic lobbying continued inside and outside the House on Friday.

However, at the eleventh hour, some senators left the House, including three senators of MQM leaving only Mian Ateeq Shaikh in the House, who voted for the key clause, facilitating Nawaz to again become PML-N head. MQM has eight senators in the House but today only four of them were present, and at the crucial time only one senator was left in the Senate.

“It was a win-win situation for us, though we lost the match by one vote, Nawaz will be back to lead PML-N,” commented PPP’s parliamentary leader in the Senate Taj Haider while talking to The News. The PPP has 27 members in the Senate. He claimed, “initially, MQM was with the joint opposition but then they astonished all of us”. “Corruption has been glamorised today with this amendment, as NAB is after the Sharifs,” he claimed.

Three PPP senators were abroad: Abdul Rehman Malik, Osman Saifullah and Haji Saifullah Bangash while Gayanchand came for voting for the amendment, moved by Aitzaz. Haider alleged that the MQM senators "got some message from somewhere" and then left from the House. However, the tables were turned when to the surprise of joint opposition, eight senators from Fata decided to support the government on this critical occasion. Previously, they have been backing opposition’s moves in the House and remained neutral as well.

A PTI’s vocal senator, it was learnt, left the Parliament House in the middle. Similarly, Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour was also missing during the last sitting, while his party was part of the combined opposition. ANP has six senators in the House. PML-N’s bitter rival PML-Q continued supporting the opposition, though its Senators Rubina Irfan and Mushahid Hussain Sayed did not attend the proceedings.

A senator belonging to the opposition told this correspondent on the condition of not being named that the amendments proposed by the PPP and PTI could have been used against head of any political party. The approval of these amendments would have resulted in the collapse of political structure. He said, "We know this game and will never be part of it."

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