HARDLY any election in Pakistan has been free of controversy. This includes Senate elections. The recent presidential election was a rare exception. Mahmood Khan Achakzai, the runner-up and joint candidate of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) — read: PTI — displayed political maturity and a democratic spirit by accepting defeat and congratulating the winner, Asif Ali Zardari of the PPP. Not just that, he went on to acknowledge that it had been a clean election in which, unlike the past, no cash for votes was involved.

Less than a month later, it was a different story in the case the election of half the Senate. Unlike in the past, there were no allegations of legislators voting for cash — a significant improvement given the background of Pakistan’s Senate polls — some serious constitutional and legal controversies arose, which continue to rage even after the winners have been notified.

The major controversy concerns the ECP’s unprecedented move to postpone election in the KP provincial assembly, literally at the eleventh hour, despite the fact that election in the three other provinces and the federal capital had been held smoothly.

KP is the only province where the PTI commands an absolute majority in the provincial assembly and has been able to elect its own chief minister, even though the ECP doesn’t recognise PTI as a parliamentary party and continues to treat its legislators as independent members. The ECP refused to........

© Dawn