Daily Times

The 27th Constitutional amendment bill tabled in National Assembly on March 8 is apart of electoral reforms package prepared by special Parliamentary Committee set up in 2014.The committee published its report in January earlier his year. The report included a draft law aimed at combining nine different election laws and strengthening the lego-electoral system. The report mentioned constitutional amendment but failed to publish the same which would have given people an opportunity to review both the proposals.

The bill proposes amendments to six articles of the constitution which are related to elections and the election commission. First of these is in article 59 of the constitution which is honestly inconsequential and will change nothing. It empowers the National Assembly to serve as Electoral College for the election of Senators from Islamabad. The assembly is already doing it under a presidential order issued under the same article. The committee should have come up with some proposals allowing people of Islamabad to have a say in the election of Senators from the city.

Though Islamabad has four seats in Senate — two general and one each for women and technocrats — they are elected by the entire National Assembly denying any say to federal capital in this regard. The constitutional provision including the lack of any residency requirement, the facts which are not going to change, allows the ruling party to grab all these seats and use them as a carrot for disgruntled party leaders from across the country. Instead of stamping the proposal, the Parliament should amend the whole system and allow the people of Islamabad an opportunity to have a say in choosing their representatives in Senate. One option could be to make Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation the Electoral College for these seats. Being a small area, Islamabad could even have a direct election. Many federations including the USA do not give representation in the upper house to their capital and following that would be fairer than giving four additional seats to the ruling party.

There is, in fact, need to revisit the whole system of Senate elections. The present system in which respective provincial assemblies elect members of theSenate from provinces is outdated and does not reflect the will of the province. The fundamental purpose of Senate is not only to provide equal representation to all the federating units but also to give representation to the whole spectrum of political views. To the contrary, the existing system is heavily tiltedin favour majority party in the provincial assembly, and other views are shut out.

To elaborate this, let us take see the results of 2013 general elections and their impact on Senate seats from the provinces. In Punjab, PML-N received 40 percent of the polled votes during 2013 elections for a provincial assembly and won 72 percent seats in the provincial assembly. The addition of independents and reserved seats gave the party 84 percent hold in the provincial assembly.

Come to the Senate election in March 2015 and PML-N, with the help of overwhelming majority in the provincial assembly, wins all eleven Senate seats from the province. 60 percent of the voters including 17 percent voting for PTI and 8 percent for PPP get nothing. It is not going to stop here. The case of Sindh is no different. Here PPP and MQM on the basis of their 48 percent votes in 2013 election were able to secure all Senate seats from the province in 2015. As in thecase of Punjab, it will be repeated here in March 2018 irrespective of thepopularity of these parties at the time.

The Parliamentary Committee should have taken such anomalies into account and suggested reforms address the same and shouldn’t haveconfined itself to cosmetic amendments in Article 59. Now, it is the job of the Parliament to do what the committee has failed. On the outset, general, technocrat and women categories of Senate members should be merged into one.Remember, there were no such divisions in the original document.These were inserted during Zia- and Musharraf-led military rules. There is no need for technocrat seats and women can be adjusted by making it obligatory for political parties to put a woman as every third candidate on their candidate lists.Without categories, even the existing system could have fetched opposition two seats in Punjab in 2015.

It is thetime that senators are elected directly by the people through aproportional system of party lists.The whole of the province or half of the same can chooseone-half of Senate members from province after every three years. Such a system will provide anaccurate reflection of the whole spectrum of political views in the Senate.

The Parliamentary committee has done the right thing to make it mandatory to hold fresh elections for local government elections within 120 days of the expiry of their terms.All the provincial governments under different pretexts refused to hold local government elections in their provinces for seven long years. One can hope that they will not be able to do it next time around.

Other provisions of the proposed amendment relate to caretakersetups. In all democracies around the world, elections for new assemblies take place before the expiry of the tenure of the existing ones. After 1977, we adopted the system where elections are held after the expiry of the term of existing assemblies. Thus, we need caretaker setups at the federal as well as theprovincial level to fill the gap between the expiry of the term of sitting houses and oath taking of the new one.

Our unique system reflects the weakness of election commission and fear of parties in the opposition that the ruling party will abuse its position to rig the elections. Thus, we need to strengthen the system in such a way that disallows the ruling party from abusing its position. The present system of caretaker setup is very dangerous. It will be able to cope if an emergency arises during its tenure. Some unscrupulous elements may even use such period to derail democracy. One can hope that time comes when the requirement of caretaker will be no more and free and fair elections can take place while the existing elected government is in place.

The writer is a freelance columnist