ISLAMABAD: Even as the ruling PML-N scrambles to build consensus on its proposed constitutional amendment to do away with secret balloting for Senate elections, constitutional experts say the move goes against the basic spirit of democracy.

If political parties agree on the 22nd constitutional amendment, they argue, it will only allow party chiefs to further tighten their stranglehold on decision making and silence political dissent, which is a cornerstone of functional democracies the world over.

Also read: PML-N for Senate polls by show of hands

The overriding fear that lawmakers will not vote according to party lines, they said, means that political parties do not trust their own legislators, which places a question mark on the legitimacy of all legislatures.

Former Supreme Court Bar Council President Yasin Azad told Dawn, “The amendment the government has worked out to counter horse-trading is antithetical to democracy and against the secrecy of the ballot.”

He insisted that the two voting methods that the government wanted to implement — whether a show of hands or through identifiable ballot papers — rendered the entire electoral exercise meaningless.

Mr Azad referred to elections in the Pakistan Bar Council, which he said were conducted exactly along the same lines as the Senate elections, following the mechanism of a single, transferable vote.

“If the heads of political parties want to remote-control their lawmakers, they should just divide the Senate on the same lines as reserved seats for women are handed out — in proportion to their strength in the electoral college. Then, there will be no need to stage this façade of an election,” he said.

Senior counsel and PTI leader Hamid Khan agrees. “If all political parties fear that their lawmakers will sell their votes, they should all sit together and divide Senate seats as per their share, because if there is balloting it has to be secret,” he said.

When confronted with his own party’s demand for voting through a show of hands, Mr Khan said that this seemed to be the only way to keep lawmakers away from the dirty politics of cash-for-votes. “I personally believe the best way to deal with the recurring menace of horse-trading in Senate elections is to convert the elections into direct ones, because open balloting doesn’t make sense.”

Mr Azad also called for a comprehensive overhaul of election methods, which he said was a time-consuming job and one that couldn’t be accomplished in the chaotic way the government seemed to have embarked on.

Backbench lawmakers also came out in opposition to the suggested amendment, saying it would kill their right to protest against the party diktat. “Many PML-N MPAs in Punjab aren’t happy with the Senate candidates imported from other provinces and chances are they will not vote for them,” a member of the Punjab Assembly from the ruling party told Dawn.

A PPP lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was no secret the PPP, like the PML-N, was run like a personal fiefdom and the planned constitutional measures would only help party leaders strengthen their control.

Explaining the sheer nervousness which the PML-N had displayed over the Senate elections, a close aide to the PM explained that the real worry wasn’t of party lawmakers blundering, but of Imran Khan’s criticism that would follow.

“If the Senate elections are held under present system and PTI fails to get seats as per its strength in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mr Khan will question these elections too, challenging the legitimacy of the Senate.”

He said the government was using Senate elections as a godsend opportunity to get the PTI back into the parliament, as the dissenting party was contesting Senate elections from KP.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2015

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