ISLAMABAD: Advisor to Prime Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Babar Awan has announced that the government will introduce a constitutional amendment bill in the Parliament next week for open voting in the Senate elections and to give the dual nationals the right to contest elections.
“The election reforms package was prepared after a series of meetings chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan,” he said, while addressing a press conference along with Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz.
Babar Awan pointed out that this will be the first constitutional reforms package since 1985 to ensure that Senate elections are held in a free, fair and transparent manner. “Every party wanted transparent elections but no one had the courage to introduce constitutional reforms for it,” he added.
“We had received information that rates have been set for buying votes in the Senate election,” he said, adding that the amendments would be a test case for all political elites of Pakistan in the parliament.
According to Babar Awan, the government’s proposed amendments are”
1. Replace ‘single transferable vote’ in Article 59(2) of the Constitution with ‘open vote’
2. Changing Article 63(1)(c) to allow Pakistanis with dual nationalities to contest elections
3. Include the word Senate in Article 226 of the Constitution
“The introduction of reforms package in Parliament will make it clear who in the opposition supported fair elections and wanted to stop the buying of votes and horse trading and who would be doing otherwise,” he remarked.
He urged the opposition parties to support the government in undertaking electoral reforms in the Parliament. “Talks will continue in the Parliament on matters of national importance,” he added.
Taking over the presser, Shibli Faraz said that the PTI government was making all-out efforts to ensure transparency in the upcoming Senate elections as it fully believed in fair and transparent electoral process.
Faraz pointed out how the PTI government had expelled several members of the provincial assembly (MPAs) from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after it emerged they had sold their votes during the 2018 Senate elections.
“We removed 20 sitting MPAs from our government in KP because there was a doubt that they used their vote incorrectly and some transactions happened that were unacceptable,” he added.
The information minister said that the concept of open ballots was also present in the Charter of Democracy — an agreement signed between the PPP and the PML-N in 2006 — and said that it was “time for implementation”.
