We have already seen in the
article https://secondriseofislam.blogspot.com/2012/07/islamic-political-system-its-main.html
what should be Pakistan’s political
system like. In four parts of this
article, the author, among other things, has suggested that political parties should be
structured on the basis of democratic principles; all bodies/posts within a
political party should be elected through internal elections so that all
decisions made by a political party could be considered as will of that political party. Another suggestion
was to adopt proportional representative system so that all shades of peoples’ will
manifested through their votes could be fully represented in the parliament. In
short both these suggestions are, in fact, directly relating to true representation
of peoples’ will.
The current parliamentary system
adopted by Pakistan lacks in both features stated above and as such cannot be
considered as true representative of peoples’ will. Another deficiency in
Pakistan’s current parliamentary system is that persons elected as members of
the parliament usually do not happen to be technocrats; they do not have
special skills and expertise specifically required to perform many a government
functions. As a result, parliament and assemblies lack in capability of
devising and supervising implementation of governmental policies which are left
in the hands of bureaucracy.
Though representativeness of
parliamentary system cannot be improved much without adopting proportional
representative system, the gravity of deficiency of representativeness of Pakistan’s
current parliamentary system may be reduced to some extent by changing the
features of reserved quota system. Presently reserved quota for parliament and assemblies
is meant for only women and minorities, and this quota is filled up on the
basis of number of seats obtained by the political parties. If this quota is
enhanced substantially and a new category of technocrats is also added
along-with women and minorities, and if such enhanced quota of reserved seats
is filled up on the basis of total votes obtained by the political parties,
instead of basis of seats obtained by the political parties, such changes in the
present reserved quota system may improve the present parliamentary system in
two ways. Firstly such changes in the reserved quota system would enable the
parliament and assemblies to induct much required technocrats which would
enhance the parliament’s and assemblies’ capability to devise and supervise
implementation of governmental policies. Secondly filling up reserved quota
seats on the basis of number of total votes
obtained by a political party would allow such political parties to be
represented in the parliament and assemblies, which otherwise remain unable to
be represented in the parliament/assemblies, despite having a substantial chunk
of votes in the elections. For instance in the recent elections, Tehreek e
Labbaik was able to bag more than two million votes but still could not get a
single seat in the parliament. Such unrepresented peoples’ will may be given
partial representation through filling up reserved quota seats on the basis of
total votes gained by a political party, instead of basis of total seats obtained by a political
party in the parliament/ assembly (which is the present way of filling reserved
quota seats).
