[Current Affairs] March 09, 2021 Top Pakistan Current Affairs for PPSC Test Preparation

2. Opposition alliance nominates Senate Chairman

What’s going on? There’s a new election everyone is talking about, and that’s the Senate Chairman election. This election will be held on March 12 via a secret ballot. The votes will be confidential, just like the main Senate election.

The details: The opposition alliance (i.e. Pakistan Democratic Movement), nominated former Prime Minister (PM), Yousaf Raza Gilani, for the Senate Chairman position. Gilani was also the opposition alliance’s joint candidate for the Senate seat from Islamabad. He defeated the govt-backed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate, Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh.

Tell me more: PM Imran Khan accused the opposition alliance of paying lawmakers to win the Islamabad Senate seat, which his ruling PTI party lost. PM Khan went on to claim that 15 or 16 lawmakers from his party “sold their vote” to the opposition candidate. Now that the Senate Chairman election is around the corner, PM Khan alleged that PTI senators are already being offered money to vote for the opposition’s candidate.

The context: Here’s an overly simplified version of how Pakistan’s Senate works. The Senate is the upper house of parliament. There used to be 104 lawmakers in the Senate. Now there are 100 after the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Each Senator serves a six year term. All of them are not elected at the same time. Half are elected at one time, and the other half three years later. Half of the Senate members retire after three years, and new Senators are elected to replace them. Members of the National Assembly and provincial assemblies vote for Senate members.

Reminder: This year, 48 Senate seats were in the running. However, polling was only done for 37 seats since the remaining 11 had unopposed candidates. On March 3, PTI gained the most new seats – 18 seats, plus five unopposed seats. Even though PTI became the single largest party in the Senate, opposition parties combined still have a slight majority with 53 seats out of 100, while PTI and its allies have 47 seats.

Looking ahead: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) are a major part of the opposition alliance. Since the opposition alliance nominated PPP member Gilani for Senate Chairman, PML-N or JUI-F members might want a candidate from their own party represented in other key Senate positions, like Deputy Chairman and Opposition Leader.

The bottom line: In order to maintain their unity, members of the opposition alliance will need to compromise on who they want to nominate for some top Senate positions.