A day after Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani survived no-trust vote against him, opposition parties on Friday formed committees to find out who violated party discipline and voted against their joint candidate Hasil Bizenjo, media reports said.
“PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has constituted a five-member fact-finding committee to ascertain the role of party senators in the voting on no-confidence motion in the Senate against Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani,” stated an official statement issued by the party. Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Nayyer Bokhari, Saeed Ghani, Sabir Baloch and Farhatullah Babar are members of the committee. “The committee may co-opt other members if necessary, and will also make recommendations about the resignations already submitted by party senators to the chairman,” the statement read, referring to reports that all of PPP’s 21 senators have submitted their resignations to Bilawal Bhutto after embarrassing defeat in Senate.
“Bilawal has expressed disappointment over the horse-trading in the Senate and decided to try to get to the bottom of it, expose those who played a dirty role, find out why the joint opposition was unable to remove Sanjrani despite being in majority and to punish any party senator if found guilty of defection and violating party discipline,” the statement added.
PML-N President Shehbaz Sharif also constituted a committee headed by Senator Rana Maqbool, vowing strict action against ‘turncoats’ who supported Sanjrani in the no-confidence vote.
Speaking to media, PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal said the investigation will be conducted to expose the senators who ‘sold their conscience’. He said that August 1 will be remembered in the history as a dark day for the country’s democracy. “The degree of horse trading that took place in Senate is not witnessed in the union council [elections] even,” he said, adding that 64 votes had gone into the black box, which then came out as 50. “The question is, who exerted such pressure that they turned into 50 votes,” he said.
“If in the Upper House, 22 per cent members sell their souls out, there is no bigger disgrace than this,” Iqbal said, adding, “It is suspected that anti-Pakistan foreign agencies had a hand in all this.” He said that no Pakistani institution will do such a thing and that no Pakistani can go against the constitutional oath. “We must investigate whether RAW was involved in this.”
PML-N Senator Mushahidullah Khan said some people have turned democracy into a ‘marketplace’. “A 100 people were present in the Senate session on Thursday,” recalled Khan, as he addressed a press conference alongside Ahsan Iqbal and Marriyum Aurangzeb outside the Parliament House. “When the stand-up vote was taken for the resolution to be passed, the decision was made there and then,” he continued. “If it is a question of one’s conscience having awoken [in the secret ballot], it is strange that it was asleep until that point,” he said.
Referring to Barrister Saif’s video circulating on social media, in which it was claimed by Bilawal that he can be heard saying ’54 votes for this resolution’ – for which Ali issued a clarification – Khan said that the matter is being investigated.
He said that in the government’s resolution against Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwalla – who had been fielded by the opposition for the post – there could only be 32 votes cast, but as it turned out, there were 34. “This was a repeat of when the mandate was stolen in 2018,” he said, before adding, “The question is, of how much benefit will this be to democracy?”
“We are investigating how many billions of rupees were doled out,” he said, adding that if an institution of the state is harming democracy, then the whole country suffers. “It was believed that it is only a human that is sold out […] some people have turned the country’s democracy into a marketplace. They harm the country and democracy for their own gains,” he added, and also sought to clarify that the party’s own members involved in the debacle were minimal in number.
