With the Election Commission of Pakistan’s announcement of the 2012 Senate elections’ schedule, the Presidency has tasked Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s leaders in Sindh to make all-out efforts to ensure that at least eight PPP senators are elected unopposed from the province. Sources said that during recent party meetings, President Asif Ali Zardari had directed senior PPP leaders – including Syed Qaim Ali Shah, Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro and Agha Siraj Durrani – to make efforts for getting all senators from Sindh elected unopposed.
They said that following Zardari’s directives, PPP leaders have started approaching leaders of the Sindh chapters of different political parties, including the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the Awami National Party (ANP), the National People’s Party (NPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q).The PPP has 93 members in the Sindh Assembly, followed by 51 of the MQM, 11 of the PML-Q, eight of the PML-Functional, three of the NPP and two of the ANP. As many as 54 senators, including 11 from Sindh, would complete their six-year term this March and elections on their vacant seats would be held on the schedule already announced.
Eight senators of the PPP – including Almas Parveen, Farooq Hamid Naek, Maula Bakhsh Chandio, Gul Muhammad Lot, Islamuddin Sheikh and Syed Faisal Raza Abidi – were elected unopposed in 2009 Senate elections from Sindh and would complete their term in March 2015.
Senators Mian Raza Rabbani and Safdar Abbasi of the PPP, Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi and Ahmad Ali of the MQM, Abdul Ghaffar Qureshi of the PML-Q, Chaudhry Sajid Hussain Zaidi of the PML-F and Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rehman) would complete their term this March.
PPP’s Abdul Hafeez Sheikh and MQM’s Abdul Khaliq Pirzada – elected on reserved seats for technocrats – and PML-Q’s Seemeen Siddiqui and PPP’s Ratna Bhagwandas Chawla – elected on reserved seats for women – would also complete their term this year.
