PTI challenges Gilani’s nomination for Senate seat

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehrik-e-insaf (PTI) has challenged the nomination of former prime minister and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Yousuf Raza Gilani for a Senate seat from Islamabad.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) heard the two sides and will announce its decision on Thursday.

Gilani, who hails from Multan, has been fielded as a joint candidate of the opposition alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement ( PDM) from Islamabad.

Fareed Rehman, a PTI Senate candidate from Islamabad, has accused Gilani of concealing the facts in his nomination papers. Gilani, he said, failed to mention his conviction in a contempt of court case back in 2012. In his petition filed with the ECP, Rehman said that the PPP leader did not fulfil the requirements for a lawmaker as mentioned in Article-62 of the Constitution.

Gilani said he would not challenge the nomination papers of Finance Minister Hafeez Sheikh, who has been fielded by the PTI against him, because he wants to face him in the electoral field.

He said his constitutional qualification to vie for the Senate seat was beyond doubt. He said his rivals have every right to contest his eligibility. “I will give my own arguments against their plea.”

Gilani had been disqualified by the Supreme Court when he was the prime minister of Pakistan. He was convicted on the charge of contempt of court for not accepting the court order to write a leter to Swiss authorities about opening of a case of foreign account of his party chief, Asif Ali Zardari.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday that the seats in the Senate of any political party should be according to their existing seats in the provincial assemblies.

“A political party should get a deserving number of seats in the Senate,” Justice Ijazul Ahsan said while hearing a case related to the presidential reference for open voting in the upper House of the parliament.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sikander Sultan Raja and the counsel for the Election Commission appeared in the court during the proceeding.

The judge observed that if a political party wins more seats than its proportion then such an occurrence could destroy the system.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) counsel told the top court that the meaning of secret voting is that the votes will remain secret. He added that the votes casted cannot be revealed to anyone ever.

At this, Justice Ahsan said that a vote cannot remain concealed forever. “To keep the votes secret forever is not as per the Constitution, neither it is [conveyed] in the court’s previous decisions.”