Separate electorate: Dual voting right for minorities urged
Minorities can elect representatives in Parliament while voting for general seat candidates through the system.
FAISALABAD:
The discourse on the method of minority representation in parliament has hovered around joint electorate system verses separate electorate for decades.
The Pakistan Christian Post (PCP), in a recent memorandum to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), has demanded minority representation in Parliament on the basis of “dual voting rights” after members from the Christian and Hindu community expressed serious reservations on the joint electorate system, introduced by former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf in 2000.
Dual Voting Right is an electoral system through which religious minorities can elect their representatives in Parliament, similar to separate electorates, while simultaneously voting for general seat candidates.
Highlighting the joint electorate system as one based on patronage, the PCP has said that the joint electorate system empowers “Muslim political parties to distribute minority reserved seats in parliament in a ratio to their seats in assemblies through selection of their favoured religious minority leaders, often after taking bribes in millions of rupees”.
In recent PCP polls 59% minorities favoured dual voting, 27% favoured joint electorates while 14% voted for separate electorates.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 1st, 2012.
The discourse on the method of minority representation in parliament has hovered around joint electorate system verses separate electorate for decades.
The Pakistan Christian Post (PCP), in a recent memorandum to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), has demanded minority representation in Parliament on the basis of “dual voting rights” after members from the Christian and Hindu community expressed serious reservations on the joint electorate system, introduced by former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf in 2000.
Dual Voting Right is an electoral system through which religious minorities can elect their representatives in Parliament, similar to separate electorates, while simultaneously voting for general seat candidates.
Highlighting the joint electorate system as one based on patronage, the PCP has said that the joint electorate system empowers “Muslim political parties to distribute minority reserved seats in parliament in a ratio to their seats in assemblies through selection of their favoured religious minority leaders, often after taking bribes in millions of rupees”.
In recent PCP polls 59% minorities favoured dual voting, 27% favoured joint electorates while 14% voted for separate electorates.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 1st, 2012.