Former prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi expressed the hope on Tuesday that Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) candidate for Senate elections from Islamabad, would succeed, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

He said the Senate elections will give the country’s politics a new direction.

Speaking to the media outside the Accountability Court (AC) in Islamabad, he said that the mode of election would remain through secret ballot unless parliament amended the law. 

Khaqan Abbasi said that firstly the government promulgated an ordinance for voting through open ballot, but when the Supreme Court (SC) gave its verdict in the favour of a secret ballot, it had to retreat. “This is the same government on whose orders 20 presiding officers in NA-75, Daska were whisked away and the by-election results were ‘tampered with’,” the former prime minister said, and added, “When the government itself is involved in ‘rigging’, what could we expect from masses.”