Daily Times

KARACHI: Civil society activists on Thursday expressed serious concerns over the draft law for electoral reforms, passed by the Parliamentary Committee headed by Ishaq Dar on Wednesday and demanded to include provisions for ensuring adequate representation to the workers, deprive communities, minorities and women.

Addressing a joint press conference at Karachi Press Club civil society, human rights and labour rights which included Karamat Ali of Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), Habibuddin Junaidi of Sindh Labour Solidarity Committee, Mahnaz Rahman of Aurat Foundation, Saeed Baloch of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), Farhat Perveen of NOW Communities and others demanded to reserve 33 percent seats for workers, 33 percent seats for women.

“We are disappointed after reading the news about passage of electoral reforms law,” said Karamat Ali. The present law is an attempt to maintain status quo as the electoral reforms has kept workers and common people out of the parliament. He said under the current electoral system workers cannot reach at parliament.

He pointed out that the civil society had submitted a set of recommendations in the form of memorandum when the parliamentary committee headed by Ishaq Dar. “None of those recommendations have been included,” he said.

Pakistan being a multinational federation, parliament ought to be so constituted as to ensure fair and adequate representation to all the people of all the federating units. Similarly, fair and adequate representation must be guaranteed to the marginalized and disadvantaged sections and groups such as: workers, peasants, women and those labeled as “minorities or non-Muslims”.

Presently, the strength of the National Assembly, 342 seats is too small to meet this requirement. It will be in the fitness of things if the number of seats in the National Assembly is raised to 500 and of the provincial assemblies in the same proportion, in order to ensure fair and equitable representation to the people of all the federating units on the one hand and all the marginalized and deprived sections of society – labour-peasants, women, non-Muslims etc -on the other, elections for 50% of the seats shall be constituency-based, which would naturally mean representation of the elite class who alone could afford to contest the constituency-based seats. In order to facilitate the participation of persons with limited or no means – the marginalized sections of society – the election to the remaining 50% seats shall be conducted on the basis of Proportionate Representation/Party List, the memorandum of civil society stated.

The formula of 33% for labour-peasants and 33% for women in all the elections and elected bodies shall be ensured. Alternately, or till necessary constitutional, legal and administrative mechanisms are put in place, the political parties committed to a democratic political order, shall voluntarily ensure that their nominated candidates shall comprise 33% labour-peasants and 33% women. Nepal parliament has adopted similar system in which 50% seats are filled with general elections. All political parties have to nominate at least 33 percent seats for women. Remaining 50 seats are filled on proportional representation.

Currently Punjab holds majority of seats in the National Assembly because of constituency elections based on population, which creates imbalance of power at all levels. The percentage of seats for Punjab should be 45%. In the past it had happened. In the united Punjab, the Muslims, despite constituting 55% of the population, voluntarily settled for 45% share of seats in the legislature, in the interest of inter communal harmony in the province. It is also noteworthy that the former Punjab province (after its merger into One Unit of West Pakistan) had agreed to accept 40 percent of the total seats in the then West Pakistan Assembly.

Equally important is the need for all political parties to institutionalize inner party democracy within their parties by holding party elections to all tiers from bottom to top every two years in order to eliminate the existing practice of investing all party powers in the hands of the chairman-president or one or two other individuals at the top. Nominations from parties should not be made the parties’ election board, but candidates must be selected by the party leadership in each constituency.

No candidates be allowed to contest from multiple constituencies and the parties nominated only those candidates who reside in that constituency.

The 1998 census noted that in Karachi, which is an integral part of Sindh, Punjabis and Pakhtuns constitute 13.94% and 11.42% respectively, of the population of the metropolis. To make amends for the demographic disorientation of Sindh caused by the incessant inflow of migrants from outside, which threatens to numerically over-run the Sindhi population, apart from effective measures by the government to regulate/control/restrict it, 55 percent of the seats from Sindh in the National Assembly and a similar percentage of seats in the Sindh Provincial Assembly shall remain permanently allocated to indigenous Sindhis, with iron-tight constitutional guarantees against its violation.

Non-Muslims have been raising their genuine grievance that while the total number of seats in National and Provincial Assemblies have been increased from time to time, automatically raising the number of seats of Muslims, the number of seats allocated to non-Muslims has remained static at 10. This anomaly needs to be rectified and the seats for non-Muslims should be increased in all representative bodies in the same proportion as the seats of the majority community have been increased.

Published in Daily Times, July 21^st, 2017.