MUDDASSIR Rizvi in his article ‘The majority myth’( Feb 9) ably analyses the low vote-shares obtained by the present ruling political parties and coalitions at the centre and in the provinces to underline how non-representative of public and political opinion is the electoral system we use in Pakistan, as do, unfortunately, several other countries.

In the first-past-the-post system, the losing candidates together represent far more voters in a constituency who have voted against the ‘winning’ candidate who is bestowed the strange honour of being the representative of all the voters, regardless of whether they voted for him or not.

Two reforms are vitally needed to make democracy truly representative of public opinion. Make voting compulsory, as do over 30 countries around the world. This writer’s article on this subject, conveying the rationale and the advantages of this method, was published in Dawn on Aug 16, 2011.

A former prime minister of Pakistan , while in office, Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani had strongly supported the proposal by the under-signed of making voting compulsory during a meeting with members of an electoral reform group convened by PILDAT. Required follow-up action by the government is regrettably unknown to date.

Second, a winning candidate must secure a minimum of 51pc of total votes. If this does not happen in the first round, the top two or three vote-getters in the first round must enter a second or even a third round until there is a winner genuinely representative of the majority of voters. The ongoing deliberations of the Parliamentary Group on Electoral Reforms will hopefully review such ideal options.

Senator (r) Javed Jabbar

Karachi

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2016