ISLAMABAD: A US university has recommended that Pakistan adopt the proportional representation (PR) electoral system to strength democracy and encourage militant groups to participate in the political process.
An-all-parties meeting in Islamabad, to be hosted by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), will debate this recommendation, said an official of the department. However, the date of the meeting has not been announced yet.
The report, “Electoral Systems Reforms Options in Pakistan,” generated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, suggests that the Taliban and other anti-state elements should be encouraged to participate in elections as that may force them to abandon militancy.
The report also suggests ways to build political parties around manifestos and issues rather than personalities and to counter financial corruption and vote rigging.
Proportional representation would reduce the disparity between a party’s share of the vote and parliamentary seats. If a party wins 40 per cent of the votes, it would obtain approximately 40 per cent seats and so on, the report explained. This provides incentive for all parties to support and participate in the system, argued the report.
The report also supports reserved seats for women and minorities. Approximately one-half of all competitive political systems in the world use some type of quota to ensure women’s representation, it said.
The ECP has approached all the political parties for consultation on the 60 reserved seats for women and 10 reserved seats for religious minorities in the National Assembly, official sources said.
The deliberations are a part of the ECP’s ongoing exercise to introduce reforms in the present system to ensure fair, free and transparent elections under an absolutely sovereign poll body, the sources added.
Secretary ECP Ishtiak Ahmed Khan, while explaining the scope and the agenda of the dialogue, said that the idea is to replace the existing electoral system with one prevalent in the democratic world to further strengthen democratic traditions in the country.
The reservations media, civil society and other quarters have with the present electoral system, especially with regards to democracy within political parties as well as the inability of talented people to participate in elections, will also be discussed, Khan said.
The ECP will forward its recommendations to the government so that necessary amendments could be made in the electoral laws, rules and regulations.
Several other amendments to evolve new rules have already been proposed to the government in the “Five-Year Strategic Plan 2010-2014” that was made public by the ECP earlier.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 11th, 2010.
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