Open balloting in Senate polls aimed at ensuring transparency: minister

ISLAMABAD: Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan on Sunday said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government intended to conduct the forthcoming Senate elections through open voting to discourage the notorious practice of horse-trading.

Bringing an end to secret balloting is the topmost priority of the government, intended at ensuring the transparency of the process, APP quoted him as saying.

Open voting, he said, was so essential in public and national interest.

He said it was also mentioned in the so-called Charter of Democracy, signed between slain prime minister Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif in 2006, to conduct the Senate elections through an open ballot. But now the parties’ leadership was doing politics on the issue.

In response to a question, Khan said that the government would not create hindrance in a way of the opposition’s proposed long march to Islamabad.

He said that the member parties of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) leadership will fail in gathering its workers and supporters for the rally as the people had already rejected them.

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