Daily Times

Despite boasting of having the first female Prime Minister in the Muslim world, Pakistan still lags far behind other democracies in the world in terms of women’ participation in the voting process. Over the years, despite halts in the democratic process, progress has been made to improve the electoral system, yet the involvement of women stays a teething issue and opposition from some political parties in improving the situation isn’t helping. A meeting of the sub-committee of the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms held recently in the Parliament House could not reach a consensus on the issue of 10 per cent mandatory participation of women in elections after the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-F (JUI-F), and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) opposed the proposal presented by other parliamentary parties. The JUI-F and JI stuck to their stance for only five percent participation of women in the elections, although other parliamentary parties demanded at least 10pc participation for validation of polls. The proposal recommends at least 10 percent participation of female voters should be made mandatory for elections, non-compliance of which will give the Election Commission of Pakistan the right to order a re-election for the questioned seat.

Representatives from both the opposing parties have maintained that women should not be “forced to vote”. This is an utter illustration of patriarchal patronage that some parties want to keep the women under. In a country like Pakistan where women’s right to vote is often violated, such improvements are necessary. More surprising is the figure of mere 10 percent that the two parties are opposing to. It was reported in previous elections that women were prevented from voting in certain constituencies in previous general electionsbecause some of the religious parties who are opposing the current proposal had joined hands to ensure that women would not turn out to vote. The move is primarily aimed to bring those women out to vote. Under the current circumstances, even the requirement of 10 percent seems to be very low. These cannot deny this important right to the women religious basis, as special arrangements can always be made to attend to any such concerns. Therefore, there is no logical explanation towards such absurd move. One of the important reason for such suppression is the lack of education and importance of the women on ballots. The government should focus on these aspects to increase the participation of enfranchised voters and must take a strict stance on the opposing parties exploiting religion to further their interests. Because until the people don’t realise the importance of their vote, such exploitation from certain groups will continue. Moreover, with an almost worse possible score on the genderparity index, such steps are critical for the country’s democracy to flourish.

To break the collusion of political parties in avoiding women from voting, it is necessary that the authorities find a way to incentivize the voting of women in such areas that could potentially help convince these parties to mobilise the women of their areas for voting. Otherwise, the violations will continue and will only hurt the cause of democracy in the country. *