THE Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has finally issued the final delimitation list of constituencies for national and provincial assemblies. The National Assembly (NA) has a total of 336 seats; 266 general seats, 10 reserved seats for non-Muslims and 60 reserved seats for women.

Imposition of a quota system in the shape of reserved seats for women is an archaic principle of distribution. This process was first introduced in the 1973 Constitution to encourage women’s participation in electoral, or rather legislative politics. But now this quota distribution has been rendered a way of granting seats to the privileged and close accomplices of political leadership. No political party has even ever tried to adopt a different behaviour in this regard.

The reserved seats are distributed in proportion to the general seats won by a political party. One seat for women quota is awarded for every 3.5 general seats won by respective political parties. For this purpose, the political parties submit a ‘priority list’ to the ECP for women seats before the general elections.

Only the close ones and the privileged get their names on that list. Party leaderships have been granted full autonomy in the matter, and they can award these seats to anyone they like. That explains why we often end up having women sitting in the National Assembly without having any sort of public mandate, representation, capability or prior exposure.

In an assembly of 336 members, the count of 60 seats is rather hefty. It is almost one-fifth of the whole. In these days, when a woman can contest the elections against general seats without any intimidation or fear, there is little justification of depriving the public to have their true representatives sitting in the assembly. If 20 per cent of the house, say, is made up of nominated members, rather than elected ones, how can our National Assembly be called a true representative of the will of the people? With a complete public mandate, this method of awarding women seats to close relatives and accomplices of party leadership without any criterion is, to me, a joke in the name of public representation and legislation.

Zain Ul Abideen
Faisalabad

Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2023