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A week after Prime Minister Imran Khan won the trust vote in Senate, the upper house, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the alliance of 11 opposition parties, has rejected the result of Senate chairman election after their candidate Yousuf Raza Gilani lost the closely-contested battle against the ruling coalition’s Sadiq Sanjrani on Friday. Sanjrani defeated Gilani by six votes. While the former got 48 votes the latter got 42. Seven votes were rejected.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ahsan Iqbal has claimed that Gilani bagged 49 votes, not 42, adding the seven rejected votes. He said that the senators who had stamped on the name of the candidate on the ballot paper cannot be considered rejected and should be counted as Gilani’s votes.
“The vote cast inside the box is valid even if it is over the name of the candidate,” he said citing a ruling by the Supreme Court. Former PM and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Raja Pervaiz Ashraf also declared Gilani the winner, saying that the government-backed candidate was defeated despite all the efforts from the government. “The Parliament was insulted. Chairman Senate has been selected artificially today,” he said.
Qasim Gilani, son of Yousuf Raza Gilani, has announced that they will challenge the result in the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz, taking to Twitter, congratulated Gilani for his “victory” which would be announced, “sooner or later”.
PPP leader Saeed Ghani has demanded the arrest of the Senate secretary for committing a ‘dacoity’ on Peoples Party’s votes during Senate elections. He said the ruling of Presiding Officer Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah rejecting Opposition’s votes during Senate elections showed his bad intent.
The PDM has decided to step=up its anti-government movement. Their leaders Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari and Maulana Fazlur Rehman held telephonic conversation to discuss PDM’s loss in the election for Senate Chairman and Deputy Chairman and the future line of action.
On one hand, the three leaders agreed to find out the reasons behind their loss in the elections while on the other, they have decided to give a tough time to the government in the coming days through a long march and other anti-government moves. The PDM also has planned a long march against the government soon.
Students expelled for hugging on University campus
The University of Lahore on March 5 expelled two students for hugging on campus. The action has divided the people over whether this was the right decision. The University administration held a meeting of the disciplinary committee and called in the two students – one male and another female. However, as they failed to appear before the committee, the committee decided to expel them and ban them from entering any of the university’s campuses.
The university said they violated Section 9 of its General Discipline Rules and Code of Conduct. These rules are not published online though. Soon after the students’ expulsion, multiple videos were uploaded online of their hugging. The videos show a young woman handing roses and cards to a young man and then bending down on one knee and holding out a bouquet of roses to him. He takes the roses and then pulls her in for a hug. A crowd of students surrounds the couple and cheers them on.
Twitter was flooded with posts after the University’s action became public. Some said expelling them was the right thing to do because their behaviour was inappropriate. One Twitter user suggested that the only reason they were expelled was that the proposal went viral online. Others thought there are a lot of other issues for the university to be concerned with, such as harassment. Lawyer and activist Jibran Nasir said society has issues aplenty and does not need to concern itself with two consenting adults expressing their love publicly.
Loan tangle continues
The Pakistan Finance Ministry is hopeful that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will roll over the $1 billion loans that matured on March 5 amid reports that the UAE had withdrawn its financial support.
The $1 billion loans as part of the $6.2 billion initial bailouts that the UAE had announced in late 2018, helping Prime Minister Imran Khan to avoid default on international debt obligations.
Out of the committed $6.2 billion, the UAE disbursed $2 billion. It did not make the $3.2 billion oil financing facility and also withheld the last $1 billion cash disbursements. The fewer disbursements by the UAE as against the commitments were because Pakistan decided to avail of $500 million cash support from Qatar.
The UAE has already rolled over a $1 billion deposit for another year, which matured in January this year. The UAE decision to roll over its loans provided a breathing space to Pakistan.
The financial assistance packages announced by Saudi Arabia and the UAE helped Pakistan to buy time to negotiate a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But the implementation of the IMF deal is also stalled for the last 13 months, which is now expected to be revived in the fourth week of this month.
Pakistan had returned the Saudi loan by securing three different financing pipelines from China. Beijing gave $1 billion as a soft loan, a credit-swap financing line of $1.5 billion and a $500 million commercial loan from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has described the rollover of these loans as critical for Pakistan’s external debt sustainability, as the country remains unable to enhance its exports that can replace these loans.
