POLITICKING over the posts of chairman and deputy chairman of the Senate may have intensified in Islamabad over the past few days, the recent elections in Balochistan proved that simply being from the majority party in the house does not make you senator. That there are other, more practical ways. Something the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s latest troubleshooter Khwaja Saad Rafique, much to his inevitable horror, had to experience first-hand last week.

He had been sent to make sure that the PML-N grab at least five Senate seats from Balochistan, one among them a senior party leader and a dear friend of the prime minister’s Sardar Yaqoob Nasir who eventually lost.

Also read: Senate to elect chairperson, deputy on 12th

Khwaja, you had but one task, the prime minister might say. And you will have to forgive him for saying so because the PML-N had the numbers on paper to dominate the elections. The PML-N and its allies have more than 30 MPAs in the Balochistan Assembly. Yet, they could get elected only three senators, the same number two smaller parties — the National Party and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party — managed to win.

While big names such as Sardar Nasir lost, independent candidate Yousuf Badini managed to earn a seat. Badini was allegedly supported by Amanullah Notezai and Karim Nausherwani. After his election as an independent candidate, Badini lost no time in rejoining the Pakistan Peoples Party — the party he belonged to as senator from 2009 to 2015.

Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal also managed to elect a senator despite having only two lawmakers of his party in the assembly. “Balochistan,” says a Quetta-based reporter, “does not behave the way you expect it to.”

But the prime minister is experienced enough to know that the tribal bonds and jealousies are so strong in Balochistan that party politics may mean little against them. Senate votes are often cast on family and tribal connections. You might elect someone due to a favour offered to you or you might vote against a candidate because you simply don’t like his looks.

“That is how it has always been,” says Anwar Sajidi, a well-respected expert on Balochistan and chief editor of the Daily Intekhab. “People violate party discipline. Some get themselves elected through backchannel, and then they work for their own agenda rather than presenting Balochistan’s case [in the Senate].”

By Balochistan’s case Mr Sajidi means the decades of political and financial neglect people in the region say they have been subjected to by the Centre. The nationalist parties believe that due to a low number of seats for the National Assembly the province does not have enough representatives to have a meaningful say in the lower house of parliament. This situation makes the Senate elections even more important for Balochistan, as the upper house is the only place where all the provinces have equal representation.

Besides, in Pakistan where general elections are mostly won by tribal and feudal lords, the Senate is one place where parties could send to the parliament the more educated and the young who could somehow not be elected to the National Assembly through popular vote. But the lords do not think time has yet come to concede any ground. In this situation perhaps the only casualties are the general public and the state’s parliamentary system. And in Balochistan there is a block of hardliners who hold that this whole exercise of parliamentary politics is futile and only ever a means to oppress the Baloch.

“The PML-N in Balochistan is not a party,” says Bashir Baloch, “it’s rather a collection of influential individuals who do as they please.” Baloch, anchorperson of a prime-time current affairs show in Balochi satellite channel Vsh News, says he rarely gets a comprehensive answer whenever he asks guests on his show why party lines are violated.

Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, PML-N’s Balochistan chapter president, had two senators elected, one his brother and the other his brother-in-law. The Balochistan Assembly speaker and now the former PML-N leader, Jan Jamali, is said to have violated party discipline and did not vote for PML-N candidates. He instead fielded his daughter as a candidate, who eventually lost. Now both the PML-N and Jamali have decided to take action against each other. Jamali has begun by making yet another faction of the Muslim League. The new party that adds to the-ever increasing number of Muslim Leagues will be called the PML-Balochistan.

It appears that whenever a powerful individual and a party collide in Balochistan, the individual wins. Internally, too, the balance of power seems to be tilted towards the more tribal regions of the province. Jhalawan, home of Nawab Zehri, has four senators now, while Makran, the non-tribal belt, has none despite Balochistan chief minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch being from there. Dr Yaseen Baloch of the National Party from Kech had filed his nomination form but withdrew.

This shows, apart from many things else, that federal governments just cannot gain any ground on the region’s sardars — not even the ones in parliament, let alone those in the mountains.

Published in Dawn March 11th , 2015

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