Karachi, March 03, 2021: In Pakistan upper house’s (Senate) election, ruling party PTI nominated Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh (Minster for Finance and Revenue) has lost to opposition alliance Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) Mr. Yousuf Raza Gillani from Islamabad.
This was not expected as the government alliance had a thin majority in the lower house that voted for this seat.
As per the unofficial results, Mr. Gillani got 169 votes whereas Dr. Shaikh could only get 164 votes. Seven votes were rejected.
The election on 37 seats of upper house were held today where counting is still going on.
We have highlighted this as a key point in our report titled ‘Pakistan Senate Elections – There is a lot more than what meets the eye’ dated Feb 24, 2021.
This loss could potentially result in a No-Confidence Move and/or political pressure on ruling party will increase – as mentioned in our report.
Other than this, the current finance minister was also dealing with IMF and had replaced Asad Umar before officially signing IMF program in Jul-2019
