Session 9: The problem of under representation

There are three essential branches of government called the legislatures, executives and judiciaries. Legislatures are the people who enact and formulate laws. The executive branch can also form laws through decrees or ordinances. The executive branch members can be selected from the parliament. One of the major components of legislatures is assemblies or parliaments .Let us first understand the meaning of the word itself. The world parliament means to speak. It is an assembly of people essentially. It is the public face of the government. Assemblies that ideologically hold respect because they are composed of lay politicians who claim to represent the people.

                   The concept of representation is very promising aspect of assemblies. This Burkian idea of representation as independent actors is not obvious today. Because today it is the parties that rule the decisions .So we can view parties today as central mechanism through which representation takes place. In Pakistan eighteen amendments has awarded powers to party leaders to strip away the assembly membership of parliamentarian if he/she does not conform to party policies and its stance on political issues. Although on paper it does make sense to give the party heads this power. But practically this can be harmful for the true representation of people. Let us say for instance there is a political worker and member of parliament coming from an area with stance of his people on certain issue completely varying with the party position on the particular case. He is in true dilemma of choosing b/w his people or his party. The ideal way of doing it would be to prefer people of his place rather than party. Because strictly speaking he is the representative of his people rather than party. But then can he count on these people to reelect him if he loses his seat in violation to the party agenda on the issue.

These kinds of situations may compel one to ignore the stance of the people and follow party policy strictly. Consequently resulting in a gap b/w the selectors (people) and selected (the representative).The true representation of the people would not occur. To curb such a practice one of the steps in this regard can be to reduce the term of these parliamentarians so that they cannot for long period under represent their people. Another step can be to curtail the power from the party heads which will also contribute in making independent actors in parliament. Only then we would be able to work towards addressing the problems of the people from the grass root level and representation would occur in its true essence.