Total Commitment Needs Full Participation
Democracy can never be meaningful without full participation of all the peoples within a democratic unit, i.e. constituency. Ways and means have to be found to ensure that most of the population gets involved, at least in the lowest tiers, or what is now commonly called the grassroots level. Among the registered voters in Pakistan there is a 54% men-46% women ratio even though the present population count says the ratio is 48% men-52% women. The number of seats that are taken up by women in every tier of democratic participation is not only negligible, it is almost non-existent. That is a non-starter for democracy. The National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) has proposed that there may be an equal number of seats upto the District Assembly, one feels it would be almost impossible to find credible women candidates to stand upto the electoral test for several years yet unless we use “force-feed” methods. For the purpose of giving women an equal voice in our democracy one proposes that we use the “running mate” formula not only at the grassroots level but up the tiers right upto the Senate. The formula is simple, if a male candidate stands for election, he will have with him as a running mate a woman, and vice versa if a woman is the candidate she will have a male as the “running mate”. Off course there has to be some pre-qualification for such candidates. Both men and women can compete on equal footing, the “coattail effect” will ensure that both the sexes will have equal number of seats on the Councils or the Assemblies. It has to be accepted that such a system will favour women deliberately so as to obtain equal participation by (and for) them, a must for meaningful democracy.
Democracy means effective governance from the grassroots level to the uppermost tier by representatives of the people elected by the people in a fair and transparent process that is all inclusive, i.e. it tries to accommodate every segment of the population and unify them though the electoral process. This verification will cut through ethnicity, sects, caste, etc. One of the best decisions taken so far is to have elections on a run-off basis i.e. the winning candidate must get 50% or more votes in the first round or there will be a second round between those two who got the maximum votes in the first round to establish the outright winner. Those voting thus have a clear choice, concurrently this breeds homogeneity since a coalition of interests must unite to either (1) elect a candidate in a positive display of their strength or (2) by a negative show of their preference they band together to keep a candidate they do not want out of the electoral process. Run-off elections encourage unity in an indirect method. Self-interest cuts against the ambitions of “special interest groups” who band together with different groups for a common purpose even though their views otherwise may be in divergence. In other words those with interests more common to each other will cause together out of a common cause.
