Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) had finally decided to take a punitive action against its leaders who have allegedly sold out their votes during the senate elections last month. Nearly 20 of its lawmakers are reported to have voted for candidates outside the party in the recently held Senate Elections by resorting to much cursed business of horse-trading. “The accused lawmakers had received as much as Rs40 million each”, the PTI chief Imran Khan revealed this while addressing a press conference in Islamabad on Wednesday. IK said that the party will give the accused a chance to explain before their names are forwarded to the National Accountability Bureau. Khan claimed that PTI, by expelling nearly “30 per cent of its leaders”, was “truly protecting the sanctity of the vote” and wondered if other political parties will follow suit. Since PTI is the only political party that has initiated an inquiry into the alleged horse-trading to single out the parliamentarians who have switched loyalties for the sake of personal interests and betrayed their own leadership.
The spirit behind the move is good that could be a step forward to purge the politics of this menace of horse-trading but the fact remains that KPK is not the only province where lawmakers have voted in favour of candidates belonging to other parties. This has happened in other provincial assemblies of Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan as well where MPAs has voted in favour of candidates belonging to rival parties. The question arises as if selling and buying of votes is immoral and illegal in KPK the same kind of rule must apply in other provinces as well. So the point is that there cannot be two different set of rules to deal this particular issue. PTI chief’s recent move to seek a legal action against its own lawmakers may place the party at a high moral footing but it is yet to see how come the PTI responds to ‘allegations of resorting to horse-trading’ in Punjab as former PPP senator Farhatullah Babar had said, “We negotiated with the parties (in KP) and secured their support. If we got two Senate seats with only seven MPAs, how did PTI win one seat in Punjab, when it could not?”
So instead of trading allegations what is direly needed is to have a proper legislation in this regard to bring an end to this undemocratic practice of horse-trading that has brought bad name to politicians besides plaguing the political environment. Now that the PTI has taken the lead by introducing a proper screening and scrutiny mechanism at party level one hopes that the party will work painstakingly to bring a bill in the parliament that will hopefully change the political landscape of the country. Bringing an effective law is the only way to end the age-old practice of horse-trading in future.