Govt proposes 'open vote' for Senate elections.

Byline: Amir Wasim

ISLAMABAD -- The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government has proposed a number of changes to the Constitution and laws to reform the electoral process with the main suggestion of holding Senate elections through an open vote instead of the current method of secret balloting.

The proposals, placed before the federal cabinet for approval last week, were made public by federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood and Minister for Narcotics Control Azam Swati at a news conference on Wednesday.

The two ministers were members of a special parliamentary committee constituted by National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser in October 2018 on the opposition's demand to probe charges of rigging in the elections held in July that year.

The committee, however, failed to complete its task owing to a number of reasons, forcing the opposition parties to finally announce its boycott of the committee in June last year.

The committee and a couple of sub-committees, however, continued to function and prepared recommendations to introduce electoral reforms.

39 changes to Constitution, laws suggested to reform electoral process; call for voting right for overseas Pakistanis

In reply to questions, the two ministers said the efforts would be made for evolving a broad-based consensus among all political parties on electoral reforms.

Mr Mahmood said the government had proposed some 39 amendments to election laws to make the voting process more transparent and free and fair.

The government has proposed changes to Senate elections laws at a time when Senate elections are about eight months away.

Mr Swati said they had suggested that elections to the Senate should be held through an open ballot instead of secret ballot to end horse trading and the use of money in the process.

He quoted the example of the 2018 Senate elections when a party, despite having only a few MPAs in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, managed to win two Senate seats from the province.

He recalled that after the Senate elections, Prime Minister Imran Khan had taken action against 20 MPAs of the PTI despite the fact that the party had only a thin majority in the provincial assembly.

The ministers, however, said they had not finalised the method of the open vote which, according to them, could be held through a show of hands, division method or even through submission of lists by political parties.

Mr Swati explained that like elections of the prime minister and chief ministers, which...