ISLAMABAD – The dispute over sharing of booty among parliamentarians from FATA has exposed the dirty money-driven politics of selling loyalties by lawmakers for the Tribal Areas to successive governments and pressure groups. After the surfacing of reports that some FATA senators paid MNAs to get themselves elected to the Senate, eight FATA MNAs on Friday gathered at the residence of their parliamentary leader Munir Orakzai to devise a strategy to face legal consequences of allegedly selling their votes for money.
A source privy to the “dirty deal” made in March 2009 Senate election between four candidates for the seats reserved for FATA in the Senate and a group of nine FATA MNAs, said the FATA MNAs formed a group for the deal with the aspirants for Senate slots and bargained with them.
“The deal was closed for Rs 600 million and each of the four Senate candidates from FATA paid Rs 150 million and the money was divided equally among the nine FATA MNAs,” the source said. He said on the election day, eight votes were polled while one of the MNAs could not turn up due to his official engagement. But the four senators did not pay the full amount to the MNAs after having been elected.
The deal was exposed when one of the MNAs, Muhammad Kamran Khan, went public for not having been paid the full amount for his vote. Kamran also asked the Election Commission to take notice of this trend of “buying and selling” votes by FATA legislators. He also demanded the government and the Election Commission to bring the FATA legislators into mainstream politics to stop this practice of selling and buying votes.
