Senate elections in Pakistan will be held on March 3. All political parties are gearing up to get their nominees elected. The ruling party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, is busy consolidating its votes by addressing the grievances of some of its disgruntled members of parliament as well as making sure that the government’s coalition partners are also satisfied. The most interesting contest will take place for the general seat from Islamabad between the finance minister, Hafeez Sheikh, and the former prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, who is a consensus candidate of the Pakistan Democratic Movement, an Opposition alliance of 11 parties. The idea of fielding Gilani was given last month by the Senator, Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, of the Pakistan Peoples Party. Apart from the other Opposition parties, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has assured the PDM of its support for Gilani. The PDM is lobbying to get the votes of the disgruntled PTI members as well as those of government allies. The reason for Gilani’s nomination is that he is well-liked across parties, and if he manages to win his seat from the capital, it will be a symbolic vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Imran Khan. Some say the government is worried while others say it will win its seats easily.

There is a debate going on about an open ballot instead of a secret ballot in the Senate polls. India has already done this, but without amending the Constitution; in Pakistan, it is a bit more complicated, and using an open ballot system may require a constitutional amendment in the end. A bill was moved in Parliament by the government regarding open balloting in the Senate, but the Opposition is in no mood to play ball. The federal government has also filed a presidential reference under Article 186 of the Constitution and sought the top court’s advice regarding the Senate polls — whether they are to be held under the Constitution (Article 226) or under the law (the Election Act, 2017). While the matter is still sub judice, the top court has observed that democracy will remain a dream unless the current voting method, that is, the secret ballot system, is changed. Recently, a few videos from the last Senate polls in 2018 emerged; in them, MPs from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were seen taking stacks of money in return for selling their votes in the Senate. Some legal analysts say the timing of the leak of these videos in the media seems suspect and it may have been done keeping in mind that the apex court ruling is still pending.

The argument in favour of an open ballot in the Senate is that not many people vote as per their conscience; they either vote for their party, for money or under pressure from certain quarters. Thus, in any case, their vote is ‘influenced’. Ideally, all parties should support this move. The Opposition parties are not averse to it, but they do not want to do the present government any favour owing to the way in which they were treated by the PTI dispensation during this tenure. In the long run, the Opposition parties are doing themselves a disservice by not supporting an open ballot just because there is no love lost between them and the PTI. For the Senate elections to be transparent, there should either be an open ballot or direct elections. It remains to be seen what the apex court eventually rules.

On the other hand, the bypolls that were held last week have put the government in an embarrassing position. According to unofficial results, the PML-N won two seats out of four; one of them was a seat that had been won by the ruling party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the PTI has been in power since 2013. Another seat in Daska, Punjab, was said to have been won by the PML-N when suddenly around 20 presiding officers went missing. Hence, the results were unnecessarily delayed. In a statement, the Election Commission of Pakistan said that it suspected that the results of 20 polling stations had been falsified in the by-election. The PML-N said the government was involved in rigging the polls and there should be new elections in Daska, whereas the prime minister also tweeted for a recount in these 20 polling stations. In a series of tweets, Khan said: “[E]ven though there is no legal compulsion to do so before ECP announces results, I would request our PTI candidate to ask for re-polling in the 20 polling stations Opposition is crying hoarse over... We will always seek to strengthen a fair and free election process. Unfortunately others lack this commitment.”

A ruling party losing bypolls is taken as an indication that the government is weak or not performing. The rising inflation and the lack of economic performance in Pakistan may be key factors in why the government could not win those seats. It needs to introspect as to what has gone wrong. The Senate polls, therefore, will also be quite interesting.

The author is a journalist based in Lahore; mehmal.s@gmail.com