Too many political parties without democracy

In quite an astonishing way, as many as 182 political parties have been registered hitherto. Apparently, at least one party is for every million people.

The question  is why so many people would wish to set up such parties which rarely play a useful role, as many of these entities exist virtually only on paper.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), this week, registered 15 new parties, five of them using the name of Pakistan Muslim League, with different suffixes of some kind tied to their names. It looks quite impossible to count the number of Muslim Leagues in the country.

Although each of the 182 parties in the country has a manifesto, at least on paper, few of these do anything to follow what the documents say beyond submitting to the election commission, which is quite frightening.

We have an increasing list of political parties in our country, as the Political Parties Order of 2002 makes it quite easy to register any such body.

Another bitter truth is a trivial difference between the ideologies stated by these parties. Most spew out the same rhetoric time and again; almost none do anything to even put this into action.

Numerous parties exist merely to accommodate their egos or as a kind of hobby for individuals who have nothing else to do so. A few parties use their groups to bargain and deal for selling their allotted-symbols.

For instance, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) of former president Pervez Musharraf is presently seeking the symbol of eagle, allotted to another party as its mark.

The more worrying fact is that the rules established for the existence and practicality of these parties are simply not abided by.

For example, almost none of any party conduct intra-party elections despite the clear-cut requirements that they ought to do so. According to the documents that such practices occur are simply fallacious.

In assembly, only a handful of parties have any kind of representation. Therefore, this trend is an indication of the unclear state of our politics and we must work to correct it.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=16835

Posted by Faisal Farooq on Mar 23 2012. Filed under Opinion, Pakistan, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.