LAHORE, March 5: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has condemned mainstream political parties for their reported agreement to disallow women to vote in local body elections in upper and lower Dir.

In a statement issued here on Friday on behalf of its chairperson, Tahir Mohammad Khan, and secretary-general Hina Jilani, the HRCP said reports of recent agreements that presented a threat to women's rights to vote in Dir were alarming.

It was all the more shameful that the mainstream political parties which claimed to represent all people of the country and to advocate equal rights for citizens regardless of gender were apparently a part of the decision, it said.

Quoting the PPP-P, PPP-Sherpao, PML-N, ANP and Jamaat-i-Islami, the HRCP said these parties had to render an explanation for not only violating democratic norms but also for prompting an electoral offence. The HRCP had no doubt that any election in which women or any other group were excluded must be declared null and void, it said.

It said the failure by the election commission to encourage the participation of women in elections, manifested in the fact that across the country registered women voters were considerably smaller in number than male voters.

A special attention was needed to address the problem in remote areas such as Dir where the gap between the genders was a particularly vast one. In Dir, 140 seats of women councillors remained vacant as a result of a similar deal struck two years ago, the HRCP said.

It said no official attempt had been made to remedy this situation, and this suggested that official policies too, despite preferences to the contrary, supported institutionalized discrimination against women.

The HRCP urged the election commission to ensure that there was no discrimination among citizens in matters of voting rights. It said the continued tendency to prevent women from voting was shameful and denied thousands of women one of their most fundamental constitutional rights.

It urged the political parties to ensure that as representatives of the people, they played a role in safeguarding the rights of women in all parts of the country rather than acting as forces of repression for the sake of political expediency, and acting to further worsen rather than alleviating the problems women faced as a result of discrimination and victimization.