ISLAMABAD: The Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) has called upon the Parliament to consider an immediate review of the inefficacy of the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system to yield truly representative legislatures and governments, and initiate wide-ranging discourse and negotiations on the adoption of Proportional Representation (PR) system that guarantees translation of more than 95 percent of votes cast into representation, says a press release on Thursday.
The obsoleteness of FPTP is becoming more pronounced as the elections are becoming more competitive with polled votes splitting in triangular and at times quadrangular races as higher number of political parties and independent candidates are vying for national and provincial assemblies’ general seats. The PR system is better designed to handle such multipronged electoral races. This system – already in practice for elections to Senate, women’s reserved seats in National Assembly (NA) and provincial assemblies (PAs), and third tier of local governments in Punjab – may also be extended to the elections to general seats in NA and PAs.
An analysis of official election results indicates that more than half of the votes polled for the general seats in NA and PAs during last four general elections (GE) did not translate into any representation. Resultantly, the assemblies created after these elections represented only a minority of the polled votes as well as the registered votes and the overall population. Moreover, the federal and provincial governments formed after the elections represented even smaller proportions of the respective electorate.
