Session 9 - The Weak State of Assemblies in Pakistan.

In this weeks reading by Heywood on assemblies, a parallel can be drawn between the expectations and functions of an assembly and the assemblies present in Pakistan. Five basic functions of assemblies pointed out in this article are legislation, representation, scrutiny, political recruitment and legitimacy.

In my opinion, the state of Pakistani assemblies is as such, that most of the above mentioned points don’t even hold prominence for the elected members of the assemblies. Our country has a national assembly and then a provincial assembly for each of the province. Most of the elected members are elected on the basis of on going influence in their constituencies. People vote merely on the basis of family name and respect. The state of our population is such that for them, assemblies don’t even matter much and what perks they get from their vote is what makes them cast their votes for certain people. An example could be the point Sir made in the last class about the guy voting for PML-N just because he was getting Rs 5000 in cash. Not only are the assemblies lacking in fulfilling the primary functions, they don’t seem to getting better.

Corruption and influential politics is on the high. The Pakistani assembly keeping passing laws and bills and no one ever sees them getting fulfilled. The worse part is, a lot of our own elected parliamentarians are barely educated and they are barely aware of what is expected from them in the tenure in the assembly. Being a member of any assembly has become a status symbol for many Pakistanis. It is a very complex and important job, which is not done justice to in our country. The apparent weak structure of our assemblies can also be pointed out by the fact that only one democratically elected assembly has been able to fulfill its 5-year tenure. All other assemblies have been dissolved and taken over by military coups. As a citizen of this country, I really hope that one day the state of our legislature and assembly becomes such, that it efficaciously fulfills all functions of the assembly.