Syeda Shehla Raza of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the expected winner for the position of deputy speaker in the Sindh Assembly owing to her party’s dominant position in the house, narrowly escaped defeat in retaining her former designation.
Shehla was facing Heer Soho of the Mutahidda Qaumi Movement (MQM) and Nusrat Seher Abbasi of the Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F).
A conspiracy theory was seen working at large in the Sindh Assmebly on Thursday where polling for the post of deputy speaker was termed void by the newly elected speaker Agha Siraj Durrani, but not before some 60 votes had been cast.
An endless guessing game started in the press gallery of the provincial legislature when the speaker halted voting almost an hour after it began saying the ballot papers had errors.
The speaker made the announcement on the complaint of a female PPP MPA who pointed out the issue.
While some suspected the assembly secretariat for trying to rig the election, others viewed the incident as a genuine mistake. “There was a misprinting in the ballot papers,” a lawmaker told Pakistan Today.
The legislator said ballot papers carried the name of speaker Durrani, instead of Shehla Raza.
The point which all observers agreed upon was that the lawmakers, especially those from PPP, had shown an unprecedented “ignorance”. They wondered how such a big mistake could go unnoticed until the 61st vote was cast.
“PPP legislators are so ignorant they could not recognise their candidate and continued with polling for one hour despite errors on the ballot papers,” said a commentator.
The misprinted ballot papers extended the assembly’s session by at least one hour as re-polling took longer than expected and lasted till 5:30pm.
Eventually, after the vote count, the speaker declared Shehla triumphant after bagging 86 out of a total 152 votes. Heer bagged 48 votes, Abbasi 18, while five votes were rejected.
Durrani administered oath to Shehla who retained the deputy speaker slot for the next five years.
Drama in Sindh Assembly over deputy speaker polls
