ISLAMABAD: Many reserved seats for women for the neighborhood and village council category remained vacant or won without any contest in the second phase of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa local election, a phenomenon that had taken place in the 1st phase of local election too.
According to an analysis recently released by Pattan Development Organisation on the second phase of pols in KP, lack of political will appears to be mainly responsible for low rate of female participation as candidates in local elections.
Interestingly, the share of independent female candidates is equal to all the political parties combined against women quota seats proving presence of women’s will to contest election.
Overall, religious parties fielded 23% and liberal parties 27% of the total contesting female candidates.
The second phase of local election shows that only 1.76 female candidates are in the field against one seat, while seat to candidate ratio on other categories of seats is much high. For instance, on average there are 10 candidates against one seat for chairperson/mayor category.
In its report, Pattan argued that prior conditions (female literacy rate, human development level, women’s participation in labour force and access to public life, etc) appear to have played a major role in determining the level of women’s participation as candidates. Because of the existing differentiation, women’s participation as candidates varies from district to district. For instance, in lower and upper Kohistan - extremely poor and underdeveloped districts about 90% women seats remained vacant. In Battagram out of total 90 female seats as many as 71 or 79% remained vacant. In South Waziristan too, more than 68% of female seats remained vacant, while in Abbottabad, only 32 or 15% of the 209 seats are vacant. And in Upper Chitral, female candidates did not leave a single seat vacant.
In most of the 18 districts where election will take place on March 31, independent female candidates like in the first phase constitute the largest chunk (51%) of the total candidates, while share of so-called liberal parties is 27% and religious parties’ 22%.
However, there appears significant variations across districts. For instance, share of religious parties is higher than that of liberal parties in six districts - Mansehra 16%, North Waziristan 36% and Kurram 36% and Orakzai 32%. The liberal parties have clear edge over religious parties in eight districts - Upper Chitral 33%, Lower Dir 49%, Malakand 44%, Shangla 43%, Swat 50%, and Upper Dir 57%. In 11 districts the independent candidates constitute clear majority in comparison to combined strength of all parties. In Abbottabad 88%, Battagram 94%, Upper Chitral 56%, Lower Chitral 64%, Mansehra 84%, North Waziristan 53%, South Waziristan 81%, Orakzai 56%, and Shangla 50%.
Analysis of the contestation data also reveals some interesting socio-political trends. Firstly, high participation of female candidates even in the conservative or traditional districts than the combined female candidates of political parties is a clear sign of emergence of new social forces who are ready to play an important role in local governance. Secondly political parties appear to be ignorant of their emergence and have little appetite to broaden and deepen democracy and to avail this opportunity.
Thirdly, political parties seem to be more interested in top positions, ie, mayors and chairpersons than in the quota seats of the marginalised sections of the society. Fourth, as a large number of women seats will remain vacant even after by-election, female populations of many neighborhood and village councils of KPK are likely to be deprived of women representatives.
Pattan’s analysis is primarily based on the ECP’s Form X (list of contesting candidates) of 17 districts.
The report recommended that ECP should make available data and forms of every election promptly and political parties need to invest resources to set up party chapters at grassroots level. It also urged political parties to also hold internal party election and ECP should monitor their polling processes. The NGO also asked civil society, women groups and trade unions to plan to filed candidates against quota seats.