PESHAWAR: Soon after Governor Faisal Karim Kundi praised his government for showing political sense, Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur on Wednesday said Senate elections were held in a transparent manner for the first time in the history of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
There was no buying and selling of votes [horse-trading] in the Senate polls, said Gandapur while replying to various questions in a media chat.
Meanwhile, the statement is a rare admission that the Senate elections in the province have always been unfair and involved money.
The PTI is ruling the province since 2013 and has went through multiple Senate polls by 2025.
At the same time, the chief minister said some people were making “strange statements” about the Senate elections.
‘WISE ENOUGH’
Earlier in the afternoon, Kundi said the provincial government of Ali Amin Gandapur acted sensibly, otherwise, the opposition parties would have secured more seats in the recent Senate elections.
Read more: ‘Gandapur was smart, else Opp would have got more Senate seats’
The arrangement meant that both sides agreed to a 6:5 formula, under which the PTI government secured six seats while the opposition parties bagged five, despite the internal divisions in Imran Khan’s party.
Just a day before Senate elections, Speaker Babar Khan Swati on Sunday had adjourned the assembly session until July 24 (Thursday).
The move prompted a swift response as the opposition moved the Peshawar High Court which nominated Kundi to take oath from the newly-elected MPAs who qualified to enter the provincial legislature through the reserved seats.
Later in the day, Kundi said the speaker had violated the constitution while Gandapur promised strict disciplinary actions against the dissidents.
Read more: MPAs take oath, Gandapur promises action against PTI dissidents
They were neither happy with the way PTI had awarded tickets nor backed the understanding between the provincial government and the joint opposition.
However, things were sorted out and elections held as per schedule on Monday, the very next day.
And on Tuesday, several PTI leaders, including Yasmin Rashid and Malik Ahmad Bachar, and workers were convicted in two separate cases related to the May 9 attacks.