The federal cabinet on Saturday accorded approval to a proposed law, to be tabled in the parliament in a few days, that abolishes the practice of secret balloting during the Senate elections. According to media reports, the proposal for holding the elections of the Upper House through a show of hands has also been rejected.
Instead, if the new law were to be approved and ratified, the Senate elections will now be held by single transferable open vote. This means that the cast vote will contain information about both the voter and the candidate to whom the vote has been cast. The decision has been taken to stop the practice of selling votes and to bring greater transparency to the electoral exercise for the Upper House.
This decision was a part of a larger set of electoral reforms that were placed before the federal cabinet recently. In a press conference, federal ministers Shafqat Mehmood and Azam Swati said efforts would be made to have a broad-based consensus on these electoral reforms so that constitutional changes could be made accordingly. The two ministers were part of a parliamentary committee formed to look into allegations of rigging in the 2018 elections.
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Approval long-standing demand of PM Imran
The Committee of the Whole Senate had five years back made several recommendations to the concerned authorities regarding changes to electoral laws after Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was in the opposition at the time, had said that secret balloting for Senate elections was an insult to Parliament and undermined party-based democracy.
PM Imran, who has been a champion of electoral reform since his party burst into national politics in 2011, has also repeatedly called for direct election to the Senate and reiterated in March 2018 that senators, some of whom allegedly give money to party bigwigs in order to be nominated and elected, could not be trusted as public servants.
The matter of secret balloting was brought to public attention after a no-confidence motion was brought against Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani many months ago. Although the motion ended in a humiliating defeat for the opposition parties in Senate, there was much talk on doing away with the curse of horse-trading during the Senate ballot.
What changes are being proposed?
During the deliberations of the Senate committee a year ago, it was noted that almost every member of the house stressed the need to curb the element of financial corruption, rigging and floor crossing in the Upper House of Parliament elections. Some MPs had proposed that polls be held by way of an open ballot as opposed to the secret election.
The committee had come out with some laudable recommendations. It proposed that the existing election system needed reform to make it more transparent. The names of federal and provincial legislators, who would be voting in the Senate election, must be printed on the ballot papers under the proposed new law.
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The forum further recommended that Article 63A of the Constitution may be amended to provide that voting or abstaining from voting contrary to any direction issued by the parliamentary party to which the senator belongs, in relation to Senate elections, must be made a ground of defection.
As part of the proposed changes, Article 62 will be amended to provide that a person must not be qualified to be member Senate unless he is a resident, for five years, of the province, or as the case may be, the federal capital from where he seeks membership.
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The need to amend Article 226 of the Constitution
Under Article 226 of the Constitution, the Senate rules provide that the election of senators, chairman and deputy chairman will be held through secret ballot. Article 226 says all elections under the Constitution other than those of the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister shall be by secret ballot.
This means that the elections of the prime minister and chief ministers are held through a show of hands and not by secret ballot. Since the Senate elections are held under the Constitution, the said article will have to be amended.
Experts point out that if the secret ballot has to be changed, Article 226 will be required to be altered as recommended by the Committee of Whole Senate. Merely amending the Senate rules will not be enough to dispense with the condition of secret ballot.
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Non-secret ballot: An advantageous change?
The proposal to make the Senate election an open one makes sense in the context of manipulations that have happened in the past. These elections often attract accusations of horse-trading and in the past, PTI also took action against some of its members from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who were found to have been involved in selling their votes in the Senate elections.
Similarly, the election for the chairman of the Senate was also weighed down by controversy when a number of votes shifted across party lines. Due to secret balloting in these elections, various pressure groups have also been able to influence votes and outcomes. This lack of transparency continues to cast a dark shadow over the Upper House. Therefore, this attempt to reform the process is a timely one.