‘Rs50 to Rs70 crores’: PM goes on to reveal corruption surrounding Senate polls

Continuing his tirade against secrecy in polls for the upper house of the parliament while his party also campaigns for election through open ballot, Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan has gone on to reveal further details of corrupt practices surrounding the vote.

Speaking to journalists in Kallar Syedan, the premier said the rate for a single Senate vote in Balochistan ranged between Rs50 to 70 crores (Rs500 to Rs700 million), which was unfortunate.

“The market of corruption in politics is on the rise, but no other party is willing to change it,” he said, regretting that in the past, people became senators by buying votes from members of national and provincial assembly votes.

“Those involved in such extravagance will later recover by minting money from the public exchequer,” he said.

PM Imran said that vote-purchase in Senate elections for the past 30 years was a big question mark over the credibility of politicians who supported a corrupt system and “traded conscience in the name of democracy”.

“A big question lies ahead, whether to go for Senate polls with the old corrupt system or to act transparently instead,” he said in response to queries regarding the leaked videos showing politicians buying and selling votes before the 2018 Senate elections.

The PM said that corrupt practices were revealed to him after he and his party members received offers from multiple sides for vote-selling before the 2018 Senate elections.

He recalled that he was approached by different people for money and offered funds for Shaukat Khanum Hospital as another mode of bribe.

“What kind of democracy is this where votes are sold? This is nothing, but a blot on democracy.”

He recalled that he ousted 20 from his party who took money for votes in the last Senate elections, adding some of them also invoked the jurisdiction of the court against the action.

He dismissed the allegations of the opposition for being in knowledge about the video way earlier, saying had he known about it, he would have presented it before the court.

Training guns at the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), he said the opposition alliance’s aim was to protect their corruption and ill-gotten money.

To a question on Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who advised Imran to learn politics from him, he said the JUI-F chief himself was the one who most benefited from secret ballot.