A video has surfaced which allegedly shows evidence horsetrading in the 2018 Senate elections, in form of illegally paying members of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly for their votes.
In the said video banknotes were piled up in front of PTI members to buy their votes. Incumbent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Law Minister Sultan Muhammad Khan can also be seen in this video from 2018.
Former PPP MPA Muhammad Ali Bacha is seen giving a bundle of money to PTI members. In the video, Sultan Muhammad receives the money and puts it in a bag. PTI leader, and MPA, Muhammad Idrees is also present in the video, who is also seen receiving money, along with PTI’s MPA Meraj Humayun and former MPA Dina Khan.
The government is proposing to hold Senate elections in 2021 by open ballot, which they claim will put an end to horsetrading in the Senate elections. As of present, the senate election is assumed to be a constitutional election and is hence conducted under a secret ballot. All political parties have held, that in such a case it is easy to buy off MPAs and infringe upon the mandate of political parties and the masses.
The presidential reference to hold the Senate election through the open ballot is also pending in the Supreme Court. A presidential ordinance has also been issued to hold the Senate elections by open ballot, subject to the decision of the Supreme Court.
Reacting to the situation, Prime minister Imran Khan said in a tweet, “he shameful way in which politicians buy & sell votes in Senate reflects the total destruction of the nation’s morality by successive ruling elites as they drowned the nation in debt.”
“This is what the PDM cabal wants to now protect by supporting a corruption-friendly system. We are determined to stop this cycle of corruption & money laundering that is debilitating the nation,” he concluded.
