Structuring grass-roots democracy
Most problems affecting humanity today have economic overtones of some kind. Military power of the western nations ensured control of the world’s raw material reserves and transportation thereof through sealanes to their industrial cities, education and technology sustained their economic supremacy. The free enterprise system has contributed to unfettered development, Adam Smith rediscovered, two centuries after death, as the new found rave idol of the Soviets in the face of their disintegrating Soviet model, in shambles mainly because of economic inadequacies.
Pakistan is one of few among third world countries having all the necessary ingredients for economic boom, abundant raw material, self-autarky in food production and rich in human resources. Instead of the level of economic prosperity enjoyed by some of the other countries of Asia, notably Japan and the four Tigers, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, even countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand have left us far behind. One can understand the oil-boosted prosperity of the countries of the Middle East, but failure in accomplishing economic amelioration of the lot of our masses is a sorry commentary on the commitment of our political hierarchy in establishing sound economic priorities and/or seeing them through into implementation, their performance truly atrocious because of an inadequate and inefficient administration structure at the grass-roots level.
The 1973 Constitution is a superb document, true that certain amendments could have been avoided or made out of less vested interest but by and large the substance of the document exists as an excellent framework for our society. There is no substitute for democracy, the worst type being better than the most benign authoritarian rule. Since our ideology is based on our religion, a socialistic type of democracy is the heart of Islam. As annunciated by the KALMA our belief is in one GOD with Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) being the last Prophet, the basis of our faith is social equality among all human beings, only possible in an unfettered democracy. Barring a few man (and woman) made problems due to narrow, parochial viewpoints, our religion and Constitution have basically no conflict, no real problem divides the Will of GOD and the Will of His people on Earth, then why has democracy failed in Pakistan to survive as an institutional force free of various hitches? While the theoretical concept of democracy has been excellent, the structure for involving people at the grass-roots level has been woefully inadequate. On the one hand our politicians speak about the power of the people, yet the power of the people is non-existent at the lower rung of administration, it becomes apparent only at the Provincial and Federal level, the rest is in the hands of the “servants” of the people, the bureaucrats, paid by the taxes collected from the people. When the British were ruling India, the system of ruling through bureaucratic fiat was excellent as an imperial measure.
In a modern Islamic country, bureaucracy exercising authority is an anachronism, while it must exist as an institution to sustain the business of government through various political transition, it is the elected who must exercise authority and bear responsibility for government from the level of the Precinct or Police Station to that of the Federal Cabinet. Unless this principle is adhered to democracy cannot succeed. In the democracies of the world in existence today it is the elected officials who are the decision-makers in government at every level of administration starting from the grass-roots level.
Given the density of Pakistan’s population against the land space, normally the lowest unit of (Local) Government should not have more than 50,000 people in one unit in Punjab and Sindh Province. This unit could be called a Precinct (or Police Station). In NWFP and Balochistan, where the population is dispersed over a greater area, the Precinct should not have more than 40,000 and 30,000 people respectively in ONE Unit. Five Precincts should make a Union of population 250,000, Four Unions a District of maximum population one million (In NWFP 200,000 to a Union, 800,000 to a District, in Balochistan 150,000 to a Union and 600,000 to a District).
The Precinct should have at least 10 elected members. All political parties should be freely allowed to take part in Local Bodies election but no single symbol should be allotted to any one political party, all individuals should have their own symbol for elections at all levels. Our masses are sophisticated enough despite widespread illiteracy to exercise their right of franchise for those best suited to fulfil their needs we contradict it by saying that the candidate must be identified with the political symbol or he cannot be identified by the voter. The candidate must be elected primarily on his/her own credentials rather than on the identification with a party, don’t independents get elected without that crutch? The political symbol tends to get a lot of incompetents and corrupt into office who may not be the real choice of the electorate.
The election to the Precinct must be in two phases. In the first phase the first 15 get elected, in the next phase an order of priority among the 15 emerges according to the number of votes each individual receives. In the same order of priority each individual is given a preference to stay in the Precinct, go onto the Union Council (3 from each Precinct) or to the District Council (2 from each Precinct), 10 members are left behind. Whoever has the highest number of votes from among those who are left behind becomes the Precinct Chairman. An electoral college of all the elected members within a Union chooses a Chairman and Vice Chairman similarly an electoral college of all the elected members within a District elects the District Chairman and Vice Chairman. In the third phase of elections, voting will be held for candidates for the Provincial and National Assemblies. The first five in the order of priority in the second phase of elections to the Precinct, irrespective of whether they have elected to opt for the Union or District Council are eligible to stand for elections. For the Provincial Assembly there should be one member per Union, for the National Assembly two candidates per District and one from each District for the Senate. In each Union (5 Precincts) there will thus be a maximum of 25 individuals eligible for election for one Provincial Assembly seat while for the two seats in National Assembly, 50 individuals will be eligible for each seat from 2 Unions (10 Precincts). For election to the Senate seats all 100 individuals are eligible from any one district. The first election would only elect such candidates who get 50% or more of the votes cast, the subsequent election should be a Run-Off between the first two candidates if the earlier election could not succeed in electing a candidate.
Pakistan today has an estimated population of 102 million people, 60 million in Punjab, Sindh 23 million, NWFP 14 million and Balochistan 5 million. With 50,000 population in Punjab and Sindh to a Precinct, 40,000 in NWFP and 30,000 in Balochistan, there will be 60 Districts in Punjab and 23 Districts in Sindh (1 million to each district), 18 Districts in NWFP (800,000 to a District) and 9 Districts in Balochistan (600,000 to a District), a grand total of 110 Districts, increasing every decade after a National Census.
The Senate will initially have 110 seats, the National Assembly 220 seats, Punjab Assembly 300 seats, Sindh Assembly 115 seats, NWFP 90 seats and Balochistan 45 seats. Any party that has not obtained 5% of the votes nationwide should be allowed to be represented as a party in any of the Assemblies, their winning candidates can either join a party or function as independents. The political parties can nominate 20% of their strength as additional women members and 5% as technocrat members except that the nominees should be from those first five elected in the Precinct elections. This will force the parties to field women candidates and technocrats at the grass-roots level. The Senate will thus go up by about 27 seats to 137, the National Assembly by another 52 seats to 272 and so on for the Provincial Assemblies, the District Councils and the Union Council. The vacancies in each Precinct will be filled by the person/s having the most votes after the first 15.
The administration at the grass-roots level will thus be firmly in the hands of elected representatives, those aspiring for high office will have to start at their roots. The Precincts will have a Police Station, Magistrates, Land Registration, Birth and Death Registration, Health Clinic, Budget and Taxation Offices etc i.e. all the socio-economic basic amenities with taxation directly related to spending. Similarly the Union and District will have the next higher levels of each requirement of the citizenry. Institutions like the Senate will have people who are directly elected representatives of the people unlike at the present where some who are normally unelectable have been elected by influence of various kind. The stranglehold that the Baradaris on respective Assembly seats will be broken by having a more refined form of stage-wise election including Run-Off voting.
The aforementioned are simply suggestions, open to debate, subject to refinement by experts. We have a serious crisis on our hands because the representatives of the people made themselves unaccountable to the people. Charisma and promises are media-fed to the masses while the real rulers, the bureaucrats, exercise their authority. While the existence of Pakistan is a great tribute to bureaucracy, that Pakistan finds itself in the shape that it is in calls for change of the system to that what democracy really envisages, not the stuff of rhetoric only! Anyone can rule, history is replete with morons who have governed, posterity’s pages are full of their mis-doings but is there anyone among us who can sit up and dare to change the system to that suited to the true genius of our people by allowing the people to govern themselves? That is the essence of democracy, one expected the fresh wind of hope that hit us in December 1988 to expand on our dreams, maybe we should carry out self-analysis to see why time ran out on us!
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