ECP summons PPP’s Taimur Talpur on Oct 4 over horse-trading claim

–Info minister Fawad Chaudhry had also asked ECP to take notice of Talpur’s ‘confession’ 

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday summoned Pakistan people’s Party (PPP) leader Taimur Talpur in connection with his admission that a member of the parliament had sold his vote to the party in the Senate elections earlier this year.

During a fiery speech made on the floor of the Sindh Assembly on Thursday, Talpur had said: “The member who sold the vote to PPP during the Senate election is still sitting in the assembly.”

The ECP has summoned Talpur to appear before the commission on October 4.

Earlier in the day, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain had appealed ECP to take notice of Talpur’s ‘confession’.

Talking to media persons outside Parliament House, Fawad said that the PPP leader has admitted that his party purchased loyalties of the opposition members and that the ECP should take action on this admission.

The minister said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) did not register any case against anyone, adding that it was only pursuing the cases registered during the previous regimes.

The minister said that politicians are considered as role models in most democratic countries but such attitude of some politicians had earned a bad name for the political parties in the country.

He said that it was PTI which suspended the membership of its 20 MPAs from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly who were involved in horse-trading in the Senate elections and refused them tickets in the general elections.

He said that at that time PTI chief Imran Khan had rightly demanded that procedure of Senate elections should be changed to prevent such sale of loyalties in future.

To a question, he said that the PTI was given the mandate to take action against those who plundered the national wealth and it was strange that opposition minds when the PTI leadership says that looters and plunderers will be taken to task.

He asked PML- N leader Mushahidullah to explain how he got his relatives inducted in the PIA.

Several political parties had accused each other of resorting to horse-trading and purchasing votes in the March 3 Senate polls and had called for an investigation into the matter by the ECP and courts.

Almost all these parties had pointed fingers at PPP, alleging that the party at the behest of Asif Zardari resorted to “worst kind” of horse-trading, especially in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan assemblies.

While the ECP had summoned members of various political parties who had made such allegations, interestingly, no one from the PPP was called in to be part of the investigation.